ital, he told her cordially, and laughed at the notion
of a ducking producing a cold or a cold a fever, or anything consumption,
with him. So the ladies had to keep down their anxious minds and allow
him to stand in wet clothing to eat his cold pie and salad.

Miss Priscilla Graves entering to them, became a witness that they were
seductresses for inducing him to drink wine--and a sparkling wine.

'It is to warm him,' they pleaded; and she said: 'He must be warm from
his walk'; and they said: 'But he is wet'; and said she, without a show
of feeling: 'Warm water, then'; and Skepsey writhed, as if in the grasp
of anatomists, at being the subject of female contention or humane
consideration. Miss Graves caught signs of the possible proselyte in him;
she remarked encouragingly:

'I am sure he does not like it; he still has a natural taste.'

She distressed his native politeness, for the glass was in his hand, and
he was fully aware of her high-principled aversion; and he profoundly
bowed to principles, believing his England to be pillared on them; and
the lady looked like one who bore the standard of a principle; and if we
slap and pinch and starve our appetites, the idea of a principle seems
entering us to support. Subscribing to a principle, our energies are
refreshed; we have a faith in the country that was not with us before the
act; and of a real well-founded faith come the glowing thoughts which we
have at times: thoughts of England heading the nations; when the smell of
an English lane under showers challenges Eden, and the threading of a
London crowd tunes discords to the swell of a cathedral organ. It may be,
that by the renunciation of any description of alcohol, a man will stand
clearer-headed to serve his country. He may expect to have a clearer
memory, for certain: he will not be asking himself, unable to decide,
whether his master named a Mr. Journeyman or a Mr. Jarniman, as the
person he declined to receive. Either of the two is repulsed upon his
application, owing to the guilty similarity of sounds but what we are to
think of is, our own sad state of inefficiency in failing to remember;
which accuses our physical condition, therefore our habits.--Thus the
little man debated, scarcely requiring more than to hear the right word,
to be a convert and make him a garland of the proselyte's fetters.

Destructively for the cause she advocated, Miss Priscilla gestured the
putting forth of an abjuring hand, with th