r, and still flows on the stream of gentle
rhetoric, as if it were _labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum_. It
is now far in to the night, and slight hints and suggestions are
propagated about separation and home-going. The topic starts new ideas
on the progress of civilisation, the effect of habit on men in all ages,
and the power of the domestic affections. Descending from generals to
the special, he could testify to the inconvenience of late hours; for,
was it not the other night that, coming to what was, or what he believed
to be, his own door, he knocked, and knocked, but the old woman within
either couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and,
having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme
unpleasantness of such a couch. The predial groove might indeed nourish
kindly the infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar vegetable to which it
was appropriated, but was not a comfortable place of repose for adult
man.

Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore,
he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing
on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should
get a penny and go home--a proposal which he subjected to some
philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he
had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had
eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting
articulate utterance from him. Though his costume was muddy, however,
and his communications about the material wants of life very hazy, the
ideas which he had stored up during his wandering poured themselves
forth as clear and sparkling, both in logic and language, as the purest
fountain that springs from a Highland rock.

How that wearied, worn, little body was to be refreshed was a difficult
problem: soft food disagreed with him--the hard he could not eat.
Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable unguent
to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it might be supposed that
there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to be treated in the
house that night. How many drops? Drops! nonsense. If the wine-glasses
of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal size, there was
no risk--and so the weary is at rest for a time.

At early morn a triumphant cry of _Eureka_! calls me to his place of
rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and