nd in the actual results, too well authenticated for dispute,
evidence of a mathematical correctness in medical science never before
attained, and scarcely hoped for by its most ardent devotees."

But he cries,

"Humbug! Humbug! All humbug! I know. I've looked at it. I understand
its worth, and that is--just nothing at all. Talk to me of any thing
else and I'll listen to you--but, for mercy's sake, don't expect me to
swallow at a gulp any thing of this sort, for I can't do it. I'd
rather believe in Animal Magnetism. Why, I saw one of these new lights
in medicine, who was called in to a child in the croup, actually put
two or three little white pellets upon its tongue, no larger than a
pin's head, and go away with as much coolness as if he were not
leaving the poor little sufferer to certain death. 'For Heaven's
sake!' said I, to the parents, 'aint you going to have any thing done
for that child?' 'The doctor has just given it medicine,' they
replied. 'He has done all that is required.' I was so out of patience
with them for being such consummate fools, that I put my hat on and
walked out of the house without saying a word."

"Did the child die?" you ask.

"It happened by the merest chance to escape death. Its constitution
was too strong for the grim destroyer."

"Was nothing else done?" you ask. "No medicines given but homeopathic
powders?"

"No. They persevered to the last."

"The child was well in two or three days I suppose?" you remark.

"Yes," he replies, a little coldly.

"Children are not apt to recover from an attack of croup without
medicine." He forgets himself and answers--

"But I don't believe it was a real case of croup. It couldn't have
been!"

And so Mr. Wiseacre treats almost every thing that makes its
appearance. Not because he understands all about it, but because he
knows nothing about it. It is his very ignorance of a matter that
makes him dogmatic. He knows nothing of the distinction between truth
and the appearances of truth. So fond is he of talking and showing off
his superior intelligence and acumen, that he is never a listener in
any company, unless by a kind of compulsion, and then he rarely hears
any thing in the eagerness he feels to get in his word. Usually he
keeps sensible men silent in hopeless astonishment at the very
boldness of his ignorance.

But Mr. Wiseacre was caught napping once in his life, and that
completely. He was entrapped; not taken in open day, with a fai