Off then he trudged, bearing this curious little culinary article,
alternately in his hand and under his arm, as seemed most convenient to
him. Unfortunately the day was warm, the way long, and the minister fat;
so that he became heartily tired of his burden before he got half-way
home. Under these distressing circumstances, it struck him, that, if,
instead of carrying the pot awkwardly at one side of his person, he were
to carry it on his head, the burden would be greatly lightened; the
principles of natural philosophy, which he had learned at college,
informing him, that when a load presses directly and immediately upon
any object, it is far less onerous than when it hangs at the remote end
of a lever. Accordingly, doffing his hat, which he resolved to carry
home in his band, and having applied his handkerchief to his brow, he
clapped the pot, in inverted fashion, upon his head, where, as the
reader may suppose, it figured much like Mambrino's helmet upon the
crazed capital of Don Quixote, only a great deal more magnificent in
shape and dimensions. There was, at first, much relief and much comfort
in this new mode of carrying the pot; but mark the result. The
unfortunate minister having taken a by-path, to escape observation,
found himself, when still a good way from home, under the necessity of
leaping over a ditch, which intercepted him, in passing from one field
to another. He jumped; but surely no jump was ever taken so completely
_in_, or, at least _into_, the dark as this. The concussion given to his
person in descending caused the helmet to become a hood; the pot slipped
down over his face, and resting with the rim upon his neck, stuck fast
there; enclosing his whole head as completely as ever that of a new born
child was enclosed by the filmy bag, with which nature, as an indication
of future good fortune, sometimes invests the noddles of her favourite
offspring. What was worst of all, the nose, which had permitted the pot
to slip down over it, withstood every desperate attempt, on the part of