another copy for you, Pisistratus,--that is mine which I have
lent Roland. This, which I bought for you to-day, you will keep."

"Thank you, sir," said I listlessly, not seeing what great good the
"Life of Robert Hall" could do me, or why the same medicine should suit
the old weather-beaten uncle and the nephew yet in his teens.

"I have said nothing," resumed my father, slightly bowing his broad
temples, "of the Book of books, for that is the lignum vitm, the
cardinal medicine for all. These are but the subsidiaries; for as you
may remember, my dear Kitty, that I have said before,--we can never keep
the system quite right unless we place just in the centre of the great
ganglionic system, whence the nerves carry its influence gently and
smoothly through the whole frame, The Saffron Bag!"

(1) Cicero's joke on a senator who was the son of a tailor: "Thou hast
touched the thing sharply" (or with a needle, acu).

(2) Rubruquis, sect. xii.

CHAPTER VI.

After breakfast the next morning I took my hat to go out when my father,
looking at me, and seeing by my countenance that I had not slept, said
gently,--

"My dear Pisistratus, you have not tried my medicine yet."

"What medicine, sir?"

"Robert Hall."

"No, indeed, not yet," said I, smiling.

"Do so, my son, before you go out; depend on it you will enjoy your walk
more."

I confess that it was with some reluctance I obeyed. I went back to my
own room and sat resolutely down to my task. Are there any of you, my
readers, who have not read the "Life of Robert Hall?" If so, in the
words of the great Captain Cuttle, "When found, make a note of
it." Never mind what your theological opinion is,--Episcopalian,
Presbyterian, Baptist, Paedobaptist, Independent, Quaker, Unitarian,
Philosopher, Freethinker,--send for Robert Hall! Yea, if there exists
yet on earth descendants of the arch-heretics which made such a noise in
their day,--men who believe, with Saturninus, that the world was made by
seven angels; or with Basilides, that there are as many heavens as there
are days in the year; or with the Nicolaitanes, that men ought to have
their wives in common (plenty of that sect still, especially in the
Red Republic); or with their successors, the Gnostics, who believed in
Jaldaboath; or with the Carpacratians, that the world was made by the
devil; or with the Cerinthians and Ebionites and Nazarites (which last
discovered that the name of Noah's wife was Ouria, and t