hom I ought to have considered as a monomaniac, rot in prison
because I, Austin Caxton, wanted common-sense. And [concluded my father,
resolutely] he is your mother's brother, Pisistratus. I should have gone
to town at once, but hearing that my wife had written to you, I waited
till I could leave her to the companionship of hope and comfort,--two
blessings that smile upon every mother in the face of a son like you.
To-morrow I go."

"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Squills, firmly; "as your medical adviser, I
forbid you to leave the house for the next six days."

(1) Tibullus, iii. 4,55.

CHAPTER II.

"Sir," continued Mr. Squills, biting off the end of a cigar which he
pulled from his pocket, "you concede to me that it is a very important
business on which you propose to go to London."

"Of that there is no doubt," replied my father.

"And the doing of business well or ill entirely depends upon the habit
of body!" cried Mr. Squills, triumphantly. "Do you know, Mr. Caxton,
that while you are looking so calm, and talking so quietly,--just on
purpose to sustain your son and delude your wife,--do you know that your
pulse, which is naturally little more than sixty, is nearly a hundred?
Do you know, sir, that your mucous membranes are in a state of high
irritation, apparent by the papillce at the tip of your tongue? And if,
with a pulse like this and a tongue like that, you think of settling
money matters with a set of sharp-witted tradesmen, all I can say is,
that you are a ruined man."

"But--" began my father.

"Did not Squire Rollick," pursued Mr. Squills,--"Squire Rollick, the
hardest head at a bargain I know of,--did not Squire Rollick sell that
pretty little farm of his, Scranny Holt, for thirty per cent below its
value? And what was the cause, sir? The whole county was in amaze! What
was the cause, but an incipient simmering attack of the yellow jaundice,
which made him take a gloomy view of human life and the agricultural
interest? On the other hand, did not Lawyer Cool, the most prudent man
in the three kingdoms,--Lawyer Cool, who was so methodical that all the
clocks in the county were set by his watch,--plunge one morning head
over heels into a frantic speculation for cultivating the bogs in
Ireland? (His watch did not go right for the next three months, which
made our whole shire an hour in advance of the rest of England!) And
what was the cause of that nobody knew, till I was called in, and found
the