better, for being of a gouty habit, and his great
grandfather by the mother's side, whose name
was Chalkstones, died of that disease, and if
anybody reading these words and wishing to
send a present of wine to the writer will please
to make it sherry, he will greatly oblige—
this man handing him, as has been said,
continually glasses of these wines one after
another in rapid succession has yet disproved
this which the poet whom your Eye-witness
is not the man to disparage has called an
enemy which steals away the brains of him who
puts it in his mouth but which is so little so
in reality that though taken into his mouth in
such large quantities as hinted at above, it has
yet so little stolen away his brains that he is
able as your readers see to write his report as
usual.

Now to begin a fresh sentence, the above
being rather a long one, and to prove more
completely that your Eye-witness is in a fit and
proper condition for the discharge of his duty,
let us go into this matter methodically, and
considering the question as one of figures, let us
proceed to calculate that since the whole area
or surface covered by the vault called the East
Vault alone, is at least eleven miles, or rather
acres, and that it contains fifty thousand pipes
of wine, and that in another department of the
same building there are thirty-one vats, one of
which, to take a specimen, contains eight thousand
two hundred and sixteen gallons, and another
ten thousand gallons, and supposing that
five parties per day visit these vaults, and that
each party consists of four persons, and that
each person drinks fifty glasses of wine, and
that for each glass of wine drunk there are two
wasted in the cleansing of the glass outside and
in with wine as before described, and in the
quantity which emerges after the withdrawal of
the gimlet and before the presentation of the
glass, and after the removal of the glass and
before the introduction of the spigot, we get a
result of two hundred, or four hundred, or
perhaps eight hundred glasses of wine wasted per
day. And though in the figures just quoted there
is a great discrepancy, and it may be asked by
the reader whether it is two hundred or eight
hundred glasses of wine that are wasted, it is
contended that that part of the question is
immaterial, the great object being to show that
there is waste, and the proverb being, Waste not
want not, and your servant hopes that Messrs.
Firkin and Stoup, or rather Beeswing and Crust,
will not want, and that your Eye-witness may
ne'er want a friend or a bottle to give him— and
may the present moment be the least happy—
But this is wandering from our subject, which
was one of statistical and numerical, and not a
convivial nature, and there must be wine enough
wasted here to supply an hospital, and let the
authorities look to it and what a good plan it
would be to catch it in receptacles placed for the
purpose and if your servant was Firkin and
Stoup or Beeswing and Crust, or both or either,
as he is not— worse luck— but were he, he
would organise some such system and taking
care not to mix the wines would bottle them
and send them to deserving friends who might
or might not be Eye-witnesses and who may
or may not be in a low condition as to their
cellars but who scorn to give hints and so then
the matter drops and we come back again to a
practical and calm consideration of the subject
once more and a great deal of valuable information
your Eye-witness would be able to give but
that it unfortunately happens that he is unable
for some reason or other, but he does not know
what, to decipher the notes which he made at
great length while in the bowels of the earth,
the writing in which the said notes are recorded
being indistinct and illegible which is probably
attributable to his having had to hold an
umbrella a lamp a pair of gloves and a wine-glass
all the time that he was writing and the lamp
was a tin one with dints in it placed at the end
of a long stick and looking in shape like a flesh-
brush, and therefore it is surely not surprising
but quite the reverse that the notes of your
servant should be difficult to read and that D.
41. 42. 43. should be the only one he is able
to make out and he wonders what this means
and if any gentleman could help him he would be
much obliged and if the wine trade would
please to come forward and throw some light
were it but the smallest glimmer, upon this
subject they would be conferring a favour, also
if they would tell him (for he has forgotten)
how many million miles of tramway are laid
down in these vaults for the casks to roll over,
they are very good things too for the visitors to
the casks to roll over for they project above the
level of the ground, and trip you up just as is
the case with the cradles on which the casks are
placed and which sticking out at unexpected
corners were the cause of several accidents to
your Eye-witness.

Your servant is surprised and annoyed to find,
what he has never observed in connexion with
any of his previous experiences, that there are
curious and unaccountable blank spaces in his
memory as to some portion of the time which
he spent within the walls of the London Docks.
It is not as if he had forgotten what took place
during those periods, but rather as if they had
not been. It appears to your servant that at
such moments he was obliterated. He was
obliterated opposite the last cask of sherry
which he experimented upon. There is probably
some miasma in these vaults caused by the
fungoid matter overhead, or by the fumes of
mingled wine and sawdust under foot, which is
the reason of this obliteration. At all events it
was so, the giving up of his lamp, the emerging
from the vaults, the ascending of the steps which
conduct to the level of the earth, all these tilings
are obliterated. After this ascent an extremely
interesting discussion took place between your
Eye-witness and Messrs. Beeswing and Crust
(who argued across your servant) on the
derivation of the word " sack," sherry sack. It was
contended that it was got from " sec" in the
French; but how this was finally decided— is
obliterated. Some very valuable wine statistics