umbrella, a telescope, and an. air-cushion in one
hand, while the fingers of the other hand played
with a heavy steel watch-chain. He was a man
with large well-defined features, bushy eyebrows,
and a rather coarse but humorous mouth. When
he lifted his hat, I saw that he was rather bald,
and had a scar high up on his left temple.

"Beds?" said the lady at the hotel bar,
running her finger up and down a large black
multiplication-table covered with white figures, with
mysterious keys hanging below each of them,
like fruit on the stem. While she was pursuing
this task with the air of conferring a favour
rather than of welcoming guests, the stranger,
who had already introduced himself to me as
Mr. Thistlewood, whispered in my ear:

"Do the Custom-house officers take bribes?"

I saw, of course, that he meant this as a joke,
and I laughed.

"Of course not," I said. "They'll pass our
luggage directly."

Mr. Thistlewood was evidently a born humorist,
for not the slightest return smile dimpled
his face as he replied:

"Well, so I thought; they'll search it more
completely, I suppose, when we get to Tibet."

Excellent satirist; he meant to ridicule our
absurd Custom-house restrictions, and to glance
incidentally at the speed of modern travelling, as
if Carlisle were only the first station on some
great and perilous journey we were about to
undertake.

"Sixty-seven and sixty-eight, John," said the
lady, handing the keys to the porter, who
instantly shouldered my trunk and began to
ascend the staircase.

"Would you order dinner, sir?" he said, as
he let the portmanteau drop at the door of 67.

"Dinner for two," I answer, glancing at my
new friend, "and as soon as possible."

"What'll you have, sir?"

"Soup, a whiting or so, and a roast fowl."

"Exactly," said my friend.

"Sorry, sir," said the porter to Mr. Thistlewood,
"that there's no glass in your room, sir;
chambermaid broke it yesterday; get you one
directly, sir."

"No, no, no, no," said my companion, rather
irritably. "I never allow glass in my room.
Bring a glass, and I leave the house." As he
said this, he smiled at me, as much as to say this
is a joke of mine to startle the porter.

"Oh, of course not, if you don't wish, sir,"
said the porter, shutting me in 67, and leading
Mr. Thistlewood into No. 68.

To wash, dress, and put on slippers after a
long journey, is a great pleasure.

My room, 67, had a side-door opening into 68,
and as my washing-stand stood near it, I could not
help hearing my eccentric friend talking to
himself as he took off his boots. All that I could
distinguish, however, were these remarkable words:

"The discrimination of logic by Jack Sheppard,
as the homology of thought, from psychology, as
the phenomenonology of mind, as Dr. Johnson
very truly said to Tippoo Sahib, will not hold.
SHALABALA!"

This shalabala was shouted so loud that I
thought it right to answer the humorist, or
actor, or ventriloquist, or professor, or whatever
he might be; I tapped at the door.

"How about Tibet now?" replied a voice;
and then there came a curious chuckling laugh,
and the question, "Do you understand conic
fluxions?"

"Not a bit," I answered; "and, what's
more, I never even heard of them."

"No more did Hegel," he replied, " till the
Bampton Professor came and proved by
arithmetic that Moses was wrong about the
height of the Pyramids."

What inexhaustible fancy. There was a tap
at my door.

"Dinner's ready, sir."

"All right," I replied. "We'll be down
directly."

I was down first, and Thistlewood was not
long after me. The soup came in, and my
companion superintended the tureen.

"Soup?" said he.

I nodded in the affirmative.

"Do you profess ontology or dentology?"
said he, "for as I took off my boots just now
it seemed to me that you were one of those
persons who would smile at the baseless
dialectic of Plato, and deride the irrational
logic of Hegel. Waiter, you've forgotten the
bread—stale! Pardon me, sir, but I am an
enthusiast, as you have perhaps already guessed."

"A great humorist," I said, laughing, "and
a man of science, I am sure."

"You're right, sir, you're right," said my
friend, rather vociferously. "Cayenne pepper,
waiter! I have devoted years in my professor's
rooms in St. Bees, to studying the solar spots
and the causes of the sun's heat. I have also
only yesterday discovered a clue—to what do
you think, sir? Tell the cook, waiter, there is
too much salt in this soup."

"I really cannot guess. No, thank you, no
more soup."

"Perpetual motion, that's all," said my
eccentric friend, coolly, as he removed the cover
of the fish. "I'll explain it you in a moment
with pieces of bread. This crust is D, that is
a rod fixed by one end to a beam supporter,
while these bits of crumb, A, B, and C (this
big one's C), are three pair of levers, forming a
parallelopidon; this spoon is D; the piston-
rod attached to H, the salt-cellar; this knife,
E, is the hot-water pump connected with the
parallel motion at F; this fork——"

I suppose I looked rather wandering, for my
new friend here took mercy on me.

"I see," he said, "you don't follow my
definitions. I will explain it better after dinner,
with French plums on a clear table—leg or
wing?"

My friend was a master-mind; that was quite
evident. How could I expect to follow the
flights of such a mind?

"Potato?"

"Thank you."

"It was I," he said, "who invented Papin's