the stomach." Here, warming with his subject, Kenelm familiarly laid
his band on the musician's shoulder, and his voice took a tone
bordering on enthusiasm. "You will allow that a man in the normal
condition of health does not fall in love every day. But in the
normal condition of health he is hungry every day. Nay, in those
early years when you poets say he is most prone to love, he is so
especially disposed to hunger that less than three meals a day can
scarcely satisfy his appetite. You may imprison a man for months, for
years, nay, for his whole life,--from infancy to any age which Sir
Cornewall Lewis may allow him to attain,--without letting him be in
love at all. But if you shut him up for a week without putting
something into his stomach, you will find him at the end of it as dead
as a door-nail."

Here the singer, who had gradually retreated before the energetic
advance of the orator, sank into the seat by the elm-tree and said
pathetically, "Sir, you have fairly argued me down. Will you please
to come to the conclusion which you deduce from your premises?"

"Simply this, that where you find one human being who cares about
love, you will find a thousand susceptible to the charms of a dinner;
and if you wish to be the popular minne-singer or troubadour of the
age, appeal to nature, sir,--appeal to nature; drop all hackneyed
rhapsodies about a rosy cheek, and strike your lyre to the theme of a
beefsteak."

The dog had for some minutes regained his master's side, standing on
his hind legs, with the tray, tolerably well filled with copper coins,
between his teeth; and now, justly aggrieved by the inattention which
detained him in that artificial attitude, dropped the tray and growled