r turn, edifies her
acquaintance with a circumstantial and alarming account, how he sneezed
four times and coughed once after being out in the rain the other night,
but having his feet promptly put into hot water, and his head into a
flannel-something, which we will not describe more particularly than by
this delicate allusion, was happily brought round by the next morning,
and enabled to go to business as usual.

Our friend is not a very adventurous or hot-headed person, but he has
passed through many dangers, as his mother can testify: there is one
great story in particular, concerning a hackney coachman who wanted to
overcharge him one night for bringing them home from the play, upon which
Felix gave the aforesaid coachman a look which his mother thought would
have crushed him to the earth, but which did not crush him quite, for he
continued to demand another sixpence, notwithstanding that Felix took out
his pocket-book, and, with the aid of a flat candle, pointed out the fare
in print, which the coachman obstinately disregarding, he shut the
street-door with a slam which his mother shudders to think of; and then,
roused to the most appalling pitch of passion by the coachman knocking a
double knock to show that he was by no means convinced, he broke with
uncontrollable force from his parent and the servant girl, and running
into the street without his hat, actually shook his fist at the coachman,
and came back again with a face as white, Mrs. Nixon says, looking about
her for a simile, as white as that ceiling. She never will forget his
fury that night, Never!

To this account Felix listens with a solemn face, occasionally looking at
you to see how it affects you, and when his mother has made an end of it,
adds that he looked at every coachman he met for three weeks afterwards,
in hopes that he might see the scoundrel; whereupon Mrs. Nixon, with an
exclamation of terror, requests to know what he would have done to him if
he _had_ seen him, at which Felix smiling darkly and clenching his right
fist, she exclaims, 'Goodness gracious!' with a distracted air, and
insists upon extorting a promise that he never will on any account do
anything so rash, which her dutiful son--it being something more than
three years since the offence was committed--reluctantly concedes, and
his mother, shaking her head prophetically, fears with a sigh that his
spirit will lead him into something violent yet. The discourse then, by
an easy