HE sat, or rather grovelled, amongst a pile of daily newspapers. His
eyes were wilder, much wilder, than the Wild West of BUFFALO-BILL, his
hair was as dishevelled as that of an infuriated Irish M.P. after an
All-night Sitting. He looked as mad as a hatter.
"What ails you?" I inquired, sympathetically, soothingly. For all
answer--as the ebulliently sentimental she-novelist saith--he pointed to
the pell-mell pile of morning papers.
"Poor fellow!" said I. "Have you then been trying to understand Sir
HENRY ROSCOE'S erudite Address to the British Association?"
He shook his head emphatically.
"Or to make head or tail, flesh, fowl, or good red herring of one of
AUBERON HERBERT'S acidulous jeremiads?"
Again he shook his head, and tore his hair at the same time.
"Or to learn from MATTHEW ARNOLD'S moony meanderings, complacent
assumptions, and tart imputations, what is the real nature of his
favourite, quiet, reasonable person,
'Asperitatis et invidiae corrector et irae?'"
Once more that action of decided dissent.
"Then perhaps you have been trying to find the 'sweet reasonableness,'
and the invaluable 'dry light' of Science in Professor TYNDALL'S furious
fulminations from the Alps?"
"Nay, nay, not so," he sobbed, insanely.
"You may have been endeavouring to reconcile all Mr. GLADSTONE'S
Home-Rule utterances during the last ten years, to identify the Mr.
BRIGHT of to-day with the People's Tribune of forty years syne, to
measure the motives of Mr. CHAMBERLAIN, or appraise the intrinsic
importance of JESSE, 'the Member for Three Acres and a Cow?'"
"Alas, no!"
"Humph! You cannot possibly have been so foolish as to venture the
brain-dizzying dangers of a course of the 'Thunderer's' tempestuous
Home-Rule leaders?"
He had not, and intimated as much, mournfully.
"Dear me! Desperate man, _do_ not say that you have been trying to
analyse the authoritative 'Analyses' of this year's County Cricketing,
to test their apportionment of champion honours, or track out their
distracting decimals to their last hidden lair!"
"Worse than that--far worse!" he moonily muttered.
"You alarm me, rash man!" I cried. "Can it possibly be that from a
comparison of the works of the (Sporting) Prophets you have foolishly
essayed to spot the winner of the coming St. Leger?"
"No such luck," said he, with a shudder.