WITH SOMETHING ON THEM. BY DR. DORAN. "Je suis aujourd'hui en train de conter; plaise à Dieu que cela ne THIRD EDITION. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET; 1859. ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY, EARL OF HAREWOOD, IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF BY-GONE HAPPY YEARS, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR The Birth of the Vine, and what has come of it The Making and Marring of Wine Imperial Drinkers and Incidents in Germany The Tables of the Ancient and Modern Egyptians TABLE TRAITS WITH SOMETHING ON THEM. THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON. A PROLOGUE. "Le véritable Amphitryon est l'Amphitryon où l'on dine."-MOLIERE. AMONG Well-worn illustrations and similes, there are few that have been more hardly worked than the above line of Poquelin-Molière. It is a line which tells us pleasantly enough, that he who sits at the head of a table is among those "respectable powers who find an alacrity of worship at the hands of man. I say, "at the hands;" for what is "adoration" but the act of putting the hand to the mouth (as expressed by its components ad and os, oris)? and what worship is so common as that which takes this form, especially when the Amphitryon is amiable, and his altar well supplied ? But such a solution of the question affords us, after all, no enlightenment as to the mystery of the reality of Amphitryon himself, whose name is now worn, and sometimes usurped, by those who preside at modern banquets. B |