ed up the chesnut which Phutatorius's wrath had
flung down--the action was trifling--I am ashamed to account for it--he
did it, for no reason, but that he thought the chesnut not a jot worse
for the adventure--and that he held a good chesnut worth stooping
for.--But this incident, trifling as it was, wrought differently in
Phutatorius's head: He considered this act of Yorick's in getting off
his chair and picking up the chesnut, as a plain acknowledgment in him,
that the chesnut was originally his--and in course, that it must have
been the owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have played
him such a prank with it: What greatly confirmed him in this opinion,
was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very narrow, it
afforded a fair opportunity for Yorick, who sat directly over against
Phutatorius, of slipping the chesnut in--and consequently that he did
it. The look of something more than suspicion, which Phutatorius cast
full upon Yorick as these thoughts arose, too evidently spoke his
opinion--and as Phutatorius was naturally supposed to know more of the
matter than any person besides, his opinion at once became the general
one;--and for a reason very different from any which have been yet
given--in a little time it was put out of all manner of dispute.

When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this
sublunary world--the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a
substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is
the cause and first spring of them.--The search was not long in this
instance.

It was well known that Yorick had never a good opinion of the treatise
which Phutatorius had wrote de Concubinis retinendis, as a thing which
he feared had done hurt in the world--and 'twas easily found out, that
there was a mystical meaning in Yorick's prank--and that his chucking
the chesnut hot into Phutatorius's...--..., was a sarcastical fling at
his book--the doctrines of which, they said, had enflamed many an honest
man in the same place.

This conceit awaken'd Somnolentus--made Agelastes smile--and if you can
recollect the precise look and air of a man's face intent in finding
out a riddle--it threw Gastripheres's into that form--and in short was
thought by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit.

This, as the reader has seen from one end to the other, was as
groundless as the dreams of philosophy: Yorick, no doubt, as Shakespeare
said of his ancestor--'was a m