f the famous 'Essay on the Human Understanding.'"

"Indeed?" said my father. "The passage must have escaped me."

"It does not occur in the 'Essay.' He gave the advice at Montpellier
to an English family of the name of Robinson; and had they listened
to him it would have robbed Micklethwaite's 'Botany of Pewsey and
Devizes' of some fascinating pages."

MR. FETT'S STORY OF THE FUNGI OF MONTPELLIER.

"About the year 1677, when Mr. Locke resided at Montpellier for the
benefit of his health, and while his famous 'Essay' lay as yet in the
womb of futurity, there happened to be staying in the same _pension_
an English family--"

"Excuse me," put in my father, "I do not quite gather where these
people lodged."

"The sentence was faultily constructed, I admit. They were lodging
in the same _pension_ as Mr. Locke. The family consisted of a Mrs.
Robinson, a widow; her son Eustace, aged seventeen; her daughter
Laetitia, a child of fourteen, suffering from a slight pulmonary
complaint; her son's tutor, whose name I forget for the moment, but
he was a graduate of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and an ardent botanist;
and a good-natured English female named Maria Wilkins, an old servant
whom Mrs. Robinson had brought from home--Pewsey, in Wiltshire--to
attend upon this Laetitia. The Robinsons, you gather, were
well-to-do; they were even well connected; albeit their social
position did not quite warrant their story being included in the late
Mr. D'Arcy Smith's 'Tragedies and Vicissitudes of Our County
Families.'

"It appears that the lad Eustace, perceiving that his sister's
delicate health procured her some indulgences, complained of
headaches, which he attributed to a too intense application upon the
'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, and cajoled his mother into packing him
off with the tutor on a holiday expedition to the neighbouring
mountains of Garrigues. From this they returned two days later about
the time of _dejeuner_, with a quantity of mushrooms, which the
tutor, who had discovered them, handed around for inspection,
asserting them to be edible.

"The opinion of Mr. Locke being invited, that philosopher took up the
position he afterwards elaborated so ingeniously, declaring that
knowledge concerning these mushrooms could only be the result of
experience, and suggesting that the tutor should first make proof of
their innocuousness on his own person. Upon this the tutor, a
priggish youth, retorted hotly that he should hope