o fits, from which for two days he never
perfectly recovers. Again--there are some persons to whom the perfume of
flowers brings sickness, and the song of a bird sadness. How are we to
account for all these things, unless we do so by a reference to the
peculiar make of the man? In this way you may understand why it is that
I hate this boy, and would destroy him. He is my black cat, and his
presence for ever throws me into fits."

"I have heard of the things of which you speak, and have known some of
them myself; but I never could believe that the _nature_ of the person
had been the occasion. I was always inclined to think that circumstances
in childhood, of which the recollection is forgotten--such as great and
sudden fright to the infant, or a blow which affected the brain, were
the operating influences. All these things, however, only affect the
fancies--they beget fears and notions--never deep and abiding
hatred--unquiet passion, and long-treasured malignity, such as I find in
you on this occasion."

"Upon this point, Munro, you may be correct. I do not mean to say that
hatred and a desire to destroy are consequent to antipathies such as you
describe; but still, something may be said in favor of such a notion. It
appears to me but natural to seek the destruction of that which is
odious or irksome to any of our senses. Why do you crush the crawling
spider with your heel? You fear not its venom; inspect it, and the
mechanism of its make, the architecture of its own fabrication, are, to
the full, as wonderful as anything within your comprehension; but yet,
without knowing why, with an impulse given you, as it would seem, from
infancy, you seek its destruction with a persevering industry, which
might lead one to suppose you had in view your direst enemy."

"This is all very true; and from infancy up we do this thing, but the
cause can not be in any loathsomeness which its presence occasions in
the mind, for we perceive the same boy destroying with measured torture
the gaudiest butterfly which his hat can encompass."

"_Non sequitur_," said Rivers.

"What's that? some of your d----d law gibberish, I suppose. If you want
me to talk with you at all, Guy, you must speak in a language I
understand."

"Why, so I will, Wat. I only meant to say, in a phrase common to the
law, and which your friend Pippin makes use of a dozen times a day, that
it did not follow from what you said, that the causes which led to the
death of