owever, to restrain himself, "confound
me if ever I heard such infidel opinions expressed in my life. Damn your
philosophy; it is cursed nonsense, and nothing else."

"A vegetable diet," proceeded Cooke, "is a guarantee for health and long
life--O Lord!" he exclaimed, "this accursed rheumatism will be the death
of me."

"What is he saying?" asked Manifold.

"He is talking philosophy," replied the doctor, with a comic grin, "and
recommending a vegetable diet and pure water."

"A devilish scoundrel," said Manifold. "He's a rat, too. Doolittle's a
rat; but I'll poison him; yes, I'll dose him with ratsbane, and then I
can eat, drink, and swill away. Is the philosopher's wife a cripple?"

"He has no wife," replied Doolittle.

"And what the devil, then, is he a philosopher for? What on earth
challenges philosophy in a husband so much as a wife,--especially if
she's a cripple and has the use of her tongue?"

"Not being a married man myself," replied the doctor, "I can give you no
information on the subject; or rather I could if I would; but it would
not be for your comfort:--ask Manifold."

"Ay; but he says there's something wrong about his head--sprouts
pressing up, or something that way. Ask Mrs. Rosebud will she hob or nob
with me. Mrs. Rosebud," he proceeded, addressing the widow, "hob or nob?"

Mrs. Rosebud, knowing that he was nothing more nor less than a gouty
old parson, bowed to him very coldly, but accepted his challenge,
notwithstanding.

"Mrs. Rosebud," he added, "what kind of a man was old Rosebud?"

"His family name," replied the widow, "was not Rosebud but Yellowboy;
and, indeed, to speak the truth, my dear old Rosebud had all the marks
and tokens of the original family name upon him, for he was as thin as
the philosopher there, and as yellow as saffron. His mother, however,
the night before he was born, dreamed that she was presented with a
rosebud, and the name, being somewhat poetical, was adopted by himself
and the family as a kind of set-off against the duck-foot color of the
ancestral skin."

The philosopher, in the meantime, finding himself interrupted, stood,
with a complacent countenance, awaiting a pause in which he might
proceed. At length he got an opportunity of resuming.

"The world," he added, "knows but little of the great founder of so many
systems and theories connected with human life and philosophy. It was
he who invented the multiplication table, and solved the forty-seventh