describes "as if he was tied all up in a double-knot, and pulled tight."

I have had one case of fracture in the leg of Mrs. Finkey's Italian
greyhound, which Jack threw a flower-pot at in the dark the other night. I
tied it up in two splints cut out of a clothes-peg in a manner which I
stated to be the most popular at the Hôtel Dieu at Paris; and the old girl
was so pleased that she has asked me to keep Christmas-day at her house,
where she burns the Yule log, makes a bowl of wassail, and all manner of
games. We are going to bore a hole in the Yule log with an old trephine,
and ram it chuck-full of gunpowder; and Jack's little brother is to catch
six or seven frogs, under pain of a severe licking, which are to be put
into one of the vegetable dishes. The old girl has her two nieces home for
the holidays--devilish handsome, larky girls--so we have determined to
take some mistletoe, and give a practical demonstration of the action of
the _orbicularis oris_ and _ievatores labiæ superioris et inferioris_. If
either of them have got any tin, I shall try and get all right with them;
but if the brads don't flourish I shall leave it alone, for a wife is just
the worst piece of furniture a fellow can bring into his house, especially
if he inclines to conviviality; although to be sure a medical man ought to
consider her as part of his stock in trade, to be taken at a fair
valuation amidst his stopple-bottles, mortars, measures, and pill-rollers.

If business does not tumble in well, in the course of a few weeks, we have
another plan in view; but I only wish to resort to it on emergency, in
case we should be found out. The railway passes at the bottom of my
garden, and Jack thinks, with a few pieces of board, he can contrive to
run the engine and tender off the line, which is upon a tolerably high
embankment. I need not tell you all this is in strict confidence; and if
the plan does not jib, which is not very probable, will bring lots of
grist to the mill. I have put the engineer and stoker at a sure guinea a