ground arrowroot, or semolina, have gone in the
dark and used the starch with an effect that lasted even unto manhood.

Stiffness is a mild way of expressing the rigidity of the Vicar's
person. Rude boys made remarks about him, suggesting that he had
swallowed the poker, that he was as stiff as a yard of pump-water, and
the like. Certainly he seemed to have come of an extremely stiff-necked
generation, as he stalked--he never used to walk--down the High Street
towards the schools.

The Reverend Henry Lambent had been taking seidlitz powders every
morning since the school feast. Not that he had feasted and made
himself ill, for his refreshment on that day had consisted of one cup of
tea and a slice of bread-and-butter--that was all at the feast; but
since then he had been nervous, hot-blooded, and strange. He had had
symptoms of the ailment before the day of the school-treat, but they had
been more mild; now they had assumed an aggravated form, and the
seidlitz powders brought him no relief.

And yet he had tried them well, telling himself that he was only a
little feverish, and had been studying a little too hard. He had taken
a seidlitz powder according to the direction for use as printed upon the
square, flat box--that is to say, he had mixed the contents of the blue
paper in a tumbler of cold spring water, waited till it dissolved, then
emptied in the contents of the white paper, stirred, and drunk while in
a state of effervescence. He had dissolved the contents of the blue
paper in one glass of water and the contents of the white paper in
another glass of water, poured one into the other, and drunk while in a
state of effervescence. He had dissolved the contents of the papers
again separately, and drunk first one and then the other, allowing the
effervescence to take place _not_ in the tumbler. Still he was no
better, and he almost felt tempted to follow the example of the Eastern
potentate who took the whole of the contents of the blue papers first,
and then swallowed the contents of all the white papers afterwards; but
history tells that this monarch did not feel any better after the dose,
so that the Reverend Henry Lambent was not encouraged to proceed.

He was not seriously bad, and yet he was, if this paradoxical statement
can be accepted. He was mentally ill for the first time in his life of
the complaint from which he suffered, and he was trying hard to make
himself believe that his ailment was b