ife, power, virtue, success, and their
opposites,--all the decrees of Fate even,--were daily concocted by
curious chemistry within that dark laboratory lying between the
oesophagus and the portal vein. There were brewed the reeking
ingredients that fertilize the fungus of Crime; there was made to bloom
the bright star-flower of Innocence; there was forged the anchor of
Hope; there were twisted the threads of the rotten cable of Despair;
there Faith built her cross; there Love vivified the heart, and Hate
dyed it; there Remorse sharpened his tooth; there Jealousy tinged his
eye with emerald; there was quarried the horse-block from which dark
Care leaped into the saddle behind the rider; there were puffed out the
smoke-wreaths of Doubt; there were blown the bubbles of Phantasy; there
sprouted the seeds of Madness; and there, down in the icy vaults, Death
froze his finger for the last, cold touch.

IV.--HARMONICS.

Ah! but the card? you ask. Yes, here it is.

--------------------------------
| |
| NAPHTALI RINK, |
| 51 Early Avenue. |
| (At the Hygienic Institute.) |
| |
--------------------------------

Of course, this is only in miniature, and represents every way but a
very small part of the document, the address being but a drop in the
superscriptive surge,--a rivulet of text meandering through a meadow of
marginalia. Inasmuch as Duespeptos courted the widest publicity for
these stomachic scraps, no scruples of delicacy forbid me to jot down
here some few of them. He thought them fitted for the race,--the more
readers the better: perhaps it may be, the more the merrier. If called
upon to classify them, I should put them all under the genus Gastric
Scholia. The different species and varieties it is hardly worth while to
enter upon here. There were intuitions, recollections, and glosses,
apparently set down in a fragmentary way from time to time, in a most
minute and distinct text. Very probably they were hints of thoughts
designed to be worked up in a more formal way. Whether the quotations
were taken at first or second hand I cannot say; but internal evidence
would seem to indicate that many of them might have been clippings from
the columns of "The Old Lancaster Day-Book." It is, perhaps, worthy of
note that Mr. Rink was, in fact, a man of rather more thought and
general information than