ed up to
Mr Cranium, informing him that four marriages were about to take place
by way of a merry winding up of the Christmas festivities.

"Indeed!" said Mr Cranium; "and who are the parties?"

"In the first place," said the squire, "my sister and Mr Foster: in
the second, Miss Graziosa Chromatic and Sir Patrick O'Prism: in the
third, Miss Tenorina Chromatic and your humble servant: and in the
fourth to which, by the by, your consent is wanted----"

"Oho!" said Mr Cranium.

"Your daughter," said Squire Headlong.

"And Mr Panscope?" said Mr Cranium.

"And Mr Escot," said Squire Headlong. "What would you have better? He
has ten thousand virtues."

"So has Mr Panscope," said Mr Cranium; "he has ten thousand a year."

"Virtues?" said Squire Headlong.

"Pounds," said Mr Cranium.

"I have set my mind on Mr Escot," said the squire.

"I am much obliged to you," said Mr Cranium, "for dethroning me from
my paternal authority."

"Who fished you out of the water?" said Squire Headlong.

"What is that to the purpose?" said Mr Cranium. "The whole
process of the action was mechanical and necessary. The application of
the poker necessitated the ignition of the powder: the ignition
necessitated the explosion: the explosion necessitated my sudden
fright, which necessitated my sudden jump, which, from a necessity
equally powerful, was in a curvilinear ascent: the descent, being in a
corresponding curve, and commencing at a point perpendicular to the
extreme line of the edge of the tower, I was, by the necessity of
gravitation, attracted, first, through the ivy, and secondly through
the hazel, and thirdly through the ash, into the water beneath. The
motive or impulse thus adhibited in the person of a drowning man, was
as powerful on his material compages as the force of gravitation on
mine; and he could no more help jumping into the water than I could
help falling into it."

"All perfectly true," said Squire Headlong; "and, on the same
principle, you make no distinction between the man who knocks you down
and him who picks you up."

"I make this distinction," said Mr Cranium, "that I avoid the former
as a machine containing a peculiar _cataballitive_ quality, which I
have found to be not consentaneous to my mode of pleasurable
existence; but I attach no moral merit or demerit to either of them,
as these terms are usually employed, seeing that they are equally
creatures of necessity, and must act as they do from the nat