day, that you might be taken for a Southerner, if you only wore
dress-coat all the time and were heavily mortgaged. Withdraw her
influence, and the desperate young man would tar and feather us all in
our beds some night."

Falling silent after this unanswerable proof of Mr. PENDRAGON'S guilt,
Mr. SIMPSON mused upon as much of the dear old nutcracker as was not
hidden by the vast charity stocking. In her ruffled cap, false front,
and spectacles, she was so exactly the figure one might picture Mr. JOHN
STUART MILL to be, after reading his latest literary knitting on the
Revolting Injustice of Masculine Society, that the Gospeler of Saint
Cow's could not help feeling how perfectly useless it was to expect her
to think herself capable of error.

As, whenever the Reverend OCTAVIUS gave indication of a capacity for
speechless thoughtfulness, his benignant mother at once concluded that
he needed an anti-bilious pill, she now made all haste to the cupboard
to procure that imitation-vegetable and a glass of water. It was the
neatest, best-stored Ritualistic cupboard in Bumsteadville. Above it
hung a portrait of the Pope, from which the grand old Apostolic son of
an infallible dogma looked knowingly down, as though with the contents
of that cupboard he could get-up such a _schema_ as would be palatable
to the most skeptical Bishop in all the Oecumenical Council, and of
which be might justly say: Whosoever dare think that he ever tasted a
better _schema_, or ever dreamed in his deepest consciousness that a
better could be made, let him be anathema maranatha! A most rakish
looking wooden button, noiselessly stealthly and sly, gave entrance to
this treasury of dainties; and then what a rare array of disintegrated
meals intoxicated the vision! There was the Athlete of the Dairy,
commonly called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore to