ty speculations which
had done duty for thought when their lectures were new, thirty years
ago. "A West Indian nigger," said Sylvanus quaintly, "ain't in it with a
genuine lazy Scotch professor. Wish I had him out to lumber with me on
the Ottawa! He'd have to hump himself or git! I'd learn him to keep
hag-hagging at trees that had been dead stumps for half a century!"

At this time of life we generally spent a part of each evening in going
round to inform our next neighbours that we had just discovered the
solution of the problem of the universe. True, we had been round at the
same friend's the week before with two equally infallible discoveries.
Most unfortunately, however, on Sunday we had gone to hear the Great
Grim Man of St. Christopher's preach in his own church, and he had
pitilessly knocked the bottom out of both of these. Sometimes our
friends called with their own latest solutions; and then there was such
a pother of discussion, and so great a noise, that the old lady beneath
foolishly knocked up a telephonic message to stop--foolishly, for that
was business much more in our line than in hers. With one mind we
thundered back a responsive request to that respectable householder to
go to Jericho for her health, an it liked her. Our landlady, being
long-suffering and humorously appreciative of the follies of academic
youth (O rare paragon of landladies!), wondered meekly why she was sent
to Coventry by every one of her neighbours on the stair during the
winter months; and why during the summer they asked her to tea and
inquired with unaffected interest if she was quite sure that that part
of the town agreed with her health, and if she thought of stopping over
this Whitsunday term.

When Sylvanus Cobb came up our stairs it was as though a bag of coals on
the back of an intoxicated carter had tumbled against our door.

"That's yon red-headed lunatic, I'll be bound; open the door to him
yersel'!" cried the landlady, remembering one occasion when Euroclydon
had entered with such fervour as almost to pancake her bodily between
wall and door.

Sylvanus came in as usual with a militant rush, which caused us to lift
the kitchen poker so as to be ready to poke the fire or for any other
emergency.

"I'll stop no more in this hole!" shouted Euroclydon of the Red Head,
"smothered with easter haar on the streets and auld wife's blethers
inby. I'm off to Canada to drive the axe on the banks of the Ottawa. And
ye can bide