rifling corruption of the name of the science, arising from their
laying the accent on the penultimate. I will now give his lordship the
receipt, which is most simple.

Take a tin-pot, go to the scuttle-butt (having obtained permission from
the quarter-deck), and draw off about half a pint of very offensive
smelling water. To this add a gill of vinegar and a ship's biscuit
broke up into small pieces. Stir it well up with the fore-finger; and
then with the fore-finger and thumb you may pull out the pieces of
biscuit, and eat them as fast as you please, drinking the liquor to wash
all down.

Now this would be the very composition to hand round to the Geographical
Society. It is not christened geography without a reason; the vinegar
and water representing the green sea, and the pieces of biscuit floating
in it, the continents and islands which are washed by it.

Now, my lord, do not you thank me for my communication?

But we must return to the _conversazione_ of Doctor and Mrs Feasible.

The company arrived. There was rap after rap. The whole street was
astonished with the noise of the wheels and the rattling of the iron
steps of the hackney-coaches. Doctor Feasible had procured some
portfolios of prints: some Indian idols from a shop in Wardour Street,
duly labelled and christened, and several other odds and ends, to create
matter of conversation. The company consisted of several medical
gentlemen and their wives, the great Mr B---, and the facetious Mr
C---. There were ten or twelve authors, or gentlemen suspected of
authorship, fourteen or fifteen chemists, all scientific of course, one
colonel, half-a-dozen captains, and, to crown all, a city knight and his
lady, besides their general acquaintance, unscientific and
unprofessional. For a beginning this was very well; and the company
departed very hungry, but highly delighted with their evening's
entertainment.

"What can all that noise be about?" said Mrs Plausible to her husband,
who was sitting with her in the drawing-room, reading the Lancet, while
she knotted, or _did not_.

"I am sure I cannot tell, Mrs Plausible."

"There, again! I'm sure if I have heard one, I have heard thirty raps
at a door within this quarter of an hour. I'm determined I will know
what it is," continued Mrs Plausible, getting up and ringing the bell.

"Thomas, do you know what all that noise is about?" said Mrs Plausible,
when the servant answered the bell.

"No, ma'am,