Mr. Punch's After-Dinner Stories

There is a sense, of course, in which everything from the pages of Mr. Punch might be regarded as coming into a collection entitled "After Dinner Stories". All good stories are really for telling after dinner. Somehow or other one seldom associates wit and humour with the breakfast table, although the celebrated breakfast parties of Rogers, the banker, were doubtless in no way deficient in either. Over the walnuts and wine, when men have feasted well and are feeling on the best of terms with themselves and their fellows, the cares of the day put past and the pleasures of the gas-lit hours begun, that is undoubtedly the ideal time for the flow of wit.