that such monsters as those Inquisitors ever
existed on earth! This, which I have just
suffered is horrible torture, certainly; but my poor
knee, in the course of a week, will be supple and
shapely as ever it was. If I hush up the fact of my
punishment by Gout, no one will suspect it when
they see me gaily strutting all right and tight.
I have been thinking about making the ascent
of Mont Blanc; yet, as the times are troubled
in Savoy, perhaps it will be more prudent to
ascend Primrose-hill instead. But the torture-
boot of those despots and Inquisitors (while the
pain it inflicts is even worse than Gout's) crushes
the limb, and leaves the patient maimed for life
and all for the chance of obtaining a false
confession, or a lying and treacherous denunciation
of others! Thank Heaven I and mine have
no worse tyrant than Gout to deal with!"

Your physiological studies will have made
you acquainted with muscular fibre and its
ultimate fibrillæ; you have peeped, through your
two-inch microscope, at an injected preparation
of human muscle, looking like a wisp of bright
yellow flax only waiting to be spun. What do
you know about muscular fibre the more for
that? Not much. Gout will give you a lesson,
gratis. He wants to establish a communication
through each separate station, or joint, of your
leg; to effect his purpose, he will construct a
novel sort of electric telegraph. He will endow
every individual fibre in your leg with a separate
consciousness and a separate will of its own.
And then they will carry the news of their
insubordination from hip to knee, and from knee
to toes' tip; they will crawl up and down, each
his own way, twisting and writhing in select
parties and clubs, agitating for fibre independence
of the human will, and satisfied with nothing
less than corporeal republicanism and universal
fibre suffrage. When they are tired of their
mutiny, and Gout has finally settled them with
two or three discharges of his electric battery,
you whisper to yourself, " I may be a little vain,
but a thousand pounds to one penny I know
more about muscular fibre than Dr. Carpenter
himself."

You are versed in nursery literature; not thy
"Royal Road to Learning" series, which so ably
teaches children how to teach their grandmothers
how to suck eggs, but the literature in which
are embalmed the King of the South, who burnt
his mouth with eating o' cold peas porridge;
the man who jumped into the bramble-bush and
scratched out both his eyes, and then, as a safe
ophthalmic remedy, returned to the same bush and
scratched them in again; the poor wind-rocked
baby on the house-top, whose father's a nobleman,
mother's a queen, sister's a lady, and wears a gold
ring, brother's a drummer, and drums for the king
—" and so wider," as our German friends have a
habit of saying, instead of "and so forth."
There is a delicious baby lyric, which it is
impossible to appreciate without the explanation
afforded by Gout. You remember the dear little
old woman who was coming home from market
upon a market-day, when she fell asleep on the
king's highway. Some one cut her petticoats
above her knees, which made the dear old woman
to shiver and to sneeze. Waking in a fright, she
began to cry, " Gracious goodness on me, can
this be I? If it be I, as I think it cannot be,
I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me."

Commentary, Marginal Note, and Scholium.
After an interesting but rather fatiguing day's
colloquy with Gout, in the course of which you
have had several master-strokes submitted to
your consideration, you are lifted out of bed, at
eight in the evening, to have it made, and
immediately lifted in again; you fall into a sound and
natural sleep, which lasts till somewhat o'clock in
the morning—for it is dark; how can you tell how
long it lasts? You wake; that is to say, something
wakes, you don't know what it is. At the foot
of the bed there lie a couple of feet which a
cruel person, during the night, has sealed to-
gether with burning sealing-wax, so that they
stick. No legs; instead of them, a packet
belonging to unknown strangers. A body cut
up into two or three pieces; part of a back; no
arms; a couple of hands, and a head; all
unconnected by the slightest bond of union. There
they lie in the bed, like the disjointed members of
a broken marionette. " Gracious goodness on me,
can this be I?" The hands feel for the place where
the hot sealing-wax has been dropped on the feet.
It is soon found. The "raw" or tender point of
one foot had come in contact with the " raw" or
tender point of the other. The hands separate
them to a prudent distance, and gently rub the
smarting burn. " Sure enough, this be I; but
where is the rest of me? I will strike a lucifer
and light the wax-candle at my bedside, to see.
It may be as well to search before it is too late.
But never mind, I can't be far off, for the
moonbeams show me that this is really my bed,
and that there is my shaving-glass. Here, too,
is the little cot pillow which I stuck behind my
head last night. I will suck an orange, and so
to sleep again (heartily glad and thankful, too).
They'll find my remains all right to-morrow
morning; if to-morrow be not to-day."

Again: You have an affectionate wife, good
and dutiful children, and excellent servants.

"Well, what of that? Of course I have.
That's nothing so very extraordinary."

Perhaps not. But, under the teachings of
Gout, you will think the combination less ordinary
than you esteem it now. You are as helpless
as a baby, much more troublesome, and
not half so pretty; and yet you are treated as
tenderly as a baby. You are lame in both
hands. You are lame in both feet, you can't
run away, they could throw you out of the
window when you are cross; and they don't.
They could share your worldly goods amongst
themselves, plunder your house, set fire to it,
and leave you to disappear in the flames; and
they don't. They might simply neglect you,
leaving you to hunger, thirst, and pine, for want
of care and consolation; instead of that, they
rise early, and late take rest; they deny
themselves their habitual pleasures, amusements, and
exercises; they cheerfully fulfil many little offices
which it grieves you to see they should have to