About a month or five weeks after my first visit to Sir Neil Eccles, I received a second invitation. The party was greatly different: it consisted principally of young men of my own age, lively scions of rank and fortune; some of them possessed of more various ability than I had ever before met with in company: but I remarked that our host seemed to regard his entertainment with the constraint that marks the performance of a duty. I looked, however, in vain around, to discover, if I could, for whom the banquet was made. The entertainment was not at all inferior in elegance and propriety to that I had previously enjoyed; and from the more juvenile character of the company, I relished it more; still, I could clearly see that more was meant by it than met either the eye or the ear. What can it be? was a question repeated to myself an hundred times as I walked homeward.

One day, it might be rather more than a week after, Sir Neil called at my counting-house—I was not at the time within, but he left his compliments, and begged that I would take a part of his Sunday dinner. The invitation was alike unexpected and surprising; for by this time I had been informed that he was, notwithstanding the general respect in which he was held, considered a pompous Oriental, and prided himself on the excellence of his table.