"Oho!" said the doctor, with a long puff of smoke out of his pipe. "If you
are convinced of that, you are one of the wisest men I have met with,
young as you are. I must have been twice your age before I got so far; and
even now, I am sometimes fool enough to doubt the only thing I was ever
sure of knowing. But come, you make me only the more earnest to collogue
with you. If we put both our shortcomings together, they may make up an
item of positive knowledge."

"What use can one make of abortive thoughts?" said Septimius.

"Do your speculations take a scientific turn?" said Doctor Portsoaken.
"There I can meet you with as much false knowledge and empiricism as you
can bring for the life of you. Have you ever tried to study
spiders?--there is my strong point now! I have hung my whole interest in
life on a spider's web."

"I know nothing of them, sir," said Septimius, "except to crush them when I
see them running across the floor, or to brush away the festoons of their
webs when they have chanced to escape my Aunt Keziah's broom."

"Crush them! Brush away their webs!" cried the doctor, apparently in a
rage, and shaking his pipe at Septimius. "Sir, it is sacrilege! Yes, it is
worse than murder. Every thread of a spider's web is worth more than a
thread of gold; and before twenty years are passed, a housemaid will be
beaten to death with her own broomstick if she disturbs one of these
sacred animals. But, come again. Shall we talk of botany, the virtues of
herbs?"

"My Aunt Keziah should meet you there, doctor," said Septimius. "She has a