-------- all people went
Upon their ten toes in wild wonderment.

--_ Bishop Hall's Satires_.

I AM - that is to say I was - a great man; but I am neither the
author of Junius nor the man in the mask; for my name, I believe, is
Robert Jones, and I was born somewhere in the city of Fum-Fudge.

The first action of my life was the taking hold of my nose with
both hands. My mother saw this and called me a genius: my father wept
for joy and presented me with a treatise on Nosology. This I mastered
before I was breeched.

I now began to feel my way in the science, and soon came to
understand that, provided a man had a nose sufficiently conspicuous
he might, by merely following it, arrive at a Lionship. But my
attention was not confined to theories alone. Every morning I gave my
proboscis a couple of pulls and swallowed a half dozen of drams.

When I came of age my father asked me, one day, If I would step
with him into his study.

"My son," said he, when we were seated, "what is the chief end of
your existence?"

"My father," I answered, "it is the study of Nosology."

"And what, Robert," he inquired, "is Nosology?"