said in his prospectus; and so said all the citizens in the city;
and there was nothing more urgent in men's hearts than to be
properly painted themselves, and nothing they took more delight in
than to see others painted. There was in the same city a young man
of a very good family but of a somewhat reckless life, who had
reached the age of manhood, and would have nothing to say to the
paint: "To-morrow was soon enough," said he; and when the morrow
came he would still put it off. She might have continued to do
until his death; only, he had a friend of about his own age and
much of his own manners; and this youth, taking a walk in the
public street, with not one fleck of paint upon his body, was
suddenly run down by a water-cart and cut off in the heyday of his
nakedness. This shook the other to the soul; so that I never
beheld a man more earnest to be painted; and on the very same
evening, in the presence of all his family, to appropriate music,
and himself weeping aloud, he received three complete coats and a
touch of varnish on the top. The physician (who was himself
affected even to tears) protested he had never done a job so
thorough.

Some two months afterwards, the young man was carried on a
stretcher to the physician's house.

"What is the meaning of this?" he cried, as soon as the door was
opened. "I was to be set free from all the dangers of life; and
here have I been run down by that self-same water-cart, and my leg
is broken."

"Dear me!" said the physician. "This is very sad. But I perceive
I must explain to you the action of my paint. A broken bone is a