tness in it,' says the cogitative Rev. Doctor. 'And an Island England
in those waters, will do wonders for Commerce,' adds the former. 'We
think of things more pregnant,' concludes the latter, with a dry gleam of
ecclesiastical knowingness. And let the Editor of the Review upon his
recent pamphlet, and let the prelate reprimanding him, and let the
newspapers criticizing his pure Saxon, have a care!

Funds, universally the most convincing of credentials, are placed at Dr.
Bouthoin's disposal: only it is requested, that for the present the
expedition be secret. 'Better so,' says pure Saxon's champion. On a day
patented for secresy, and swearing-in the whole American Continent
through the cables to keep the secret by declaring the patent, the Rev.
Dr. Bouthoin, accompanied by his curate, the Rev. Mancate Semhians,
stumbling across portmanteaux crammed with lexicons and dictionaries and
other tubes of the voice of Hermes, takes possession of berths in the
ship Polypheme, bound, as they mutually conceive, for the biggest
adventure ever embarked on by a far-thoughted, high-thoughted, patriotic
pair speaking pure Saxon or other.

Colney, with apologies to his hearers, avoided the custom of our period
(called the Realistic) to create, when casual opportunity offers, a
belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience. He passed
under veil the Rev. Doctor's acknowledgement of Neptune's power, and the
temporary collapse of Mr. Semhians. Proceeding at once to the comments of
these high-class missionaries on the really curious inquisitiveness of
certain of the foreign passengers on board, he introduced to them the
indisputably learned, the very argumentative, crashing, arrogant,
pedantic, dogmatic, philological German gentleman, Dr. Gannius, reeking
of the Teutonic Professor, as a library volume of its leather. With him
is his fairhaired artless daughter Delphica. An interesting couple for
the beguilement of a voyage: she so beautifully moderates his irascible
incisiveness! Yet there is a strange tone that they have. What, then, of
the polite, the anecdotic Gallic M. Falarique, who studiously engages the
young lady in colloquy when Mr. Semhians is agitating outside them to say
a word? What of that outpouring, explosive, equally voluble, uncontrolled
M. Bobinikine, a Mongol Russian, shaped, featured, hued like the
pot-boiled, round and tight young dumpling of our primitive boyhood,
which smokes on the dish from the pot? An