does not know it. As is the difference between these two forces, so is
the difference in the method of their employment for the purpose of
cure." However, when I left I promised--and I mean to keep my vow--that
if ever I am unfortunate enough to find my vertebrae creaking like "an
old hinge," I will come to Mr. Ashman and have it greased. The remark in
his book as to the success of medicine depending on the qualities of him
who administered it was, we may recollect, confirmed at the 1874 meeting
of the British Association in Belfast.

Joseph Ashman has had a chequered history. He has dwelt in the tents of
the Mormonites; has been one of the Peculiar People. In early life he
was in service in the country, where his master used to flog him until,
to use his own expression, he nearly cut him in two. His earliest
patients were cattle. "For a healer," he said, "give me a man as can
clean a window or scrub a floor. Christ himself, when He chose those who
were to be healers as well as preachers, chose fishermen, fine, deep
chested men, depend upon it, sir," and he rapped upon his own sonorous
lungs until they reverberated. He was certainly blessed with a
superabundance of good health, and looked benevolent enough to impart
all his surplus stock to anybody who wanted it.

CHAPTER XXXV.

A PHRENOLOGICAL EVENING.

The experience I am about to chronicle occurred when the Beecher-Tilton
scandal was at its height; and I was attracted by the somewhat ambiguous
title "Burns upon Beecher."

Mr. James Burns, the spirited proprietor of the Progressive Library,
Southampton Row, having devoted himself to the study of phrenology, has
for some time past held a series of craniological seances on Tuesday
evenings, at which he "takes off" the head of some well-known person, or
your own, if you like, whether you are well-known or born to blush
unseen, not in the way of physical decapitation, but by the method of
phrenological diagnosis. I greatly regretted having, on a previous
occasion, missed the analysis of Dr. Kenealy's cerebral developments. I
believe the Claimant himself was once the object of Mr. Burns' remarks;
but when Mr. Beecher's cranium was laid down for dissection at the
height of the Beecher-Tilton sensation, I could resist no longer, but,
despite all obstacles, repaired to the Institute of Progress.

About a score of people were gathered in that first-floor front where I
had seen so many strange things. Of these pe