them away labouring under a vague sense of obligation.
The sight of an old friend at that period was almost dangerous to him. His feelings would quite overcome him. He could not speak. You feared that he would burst.
He was generally quite laid up on Christmas-day itself, owing to having drunk so many sentimental toasts on Christmas-eve. I never saw such a man as Skittles for proposing and drinking sentimental toasts. He would drink to "dear old Christmas-time," and to "dear old England;" and then he would drink to his mother, and all his other relations, and to "lovely woman," and "old chums," or he would propose "Friendship," in the abstract, "may it never grow cool in the heart of a true-born Briton," and "Love—may it ever look out at us from the eyes of our sweethearts and wives," or even "The Sun—that is ever shining behind the clouds, dear boys,—where we can't see it, and where it is not of much use to us." He was so full of sentiment, was Skittles!
But his favourite toast, and the one over which he would become more eloquently lugubrious than over any other, was always "absent friends." He appeared to be singularly rich in "absent friends." And it must be said for him that he never forgot them. Whenever and wherever liquor was to his hand, Skittles's "absent friends" were sure of a drink, and his present friends, unless they displayed great tact and firmness, of a speech calculated to give them all the blues for a week.
Folks did say at one time that Skittles's eyes usually turned in the direction of the county jail when he pledged this toast; but on its being ascertained that Skittles's kindly remembrance was not intended to be exclusive, but embraced everybody else's absent friends as well as his own, the uncharitable suggestion was withdrawn.
