CHAPTER CXXXIV.

A TRANSITION, AN ANECDOTE, AN APOSTROPHE, AND A PUN, PUNNET, OR PUNDIGRION.

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures;
Et sermone opus est, modo tristi, sæpe jocoso.
                                                                    HORACE.

The Reader is now so far acquainted with the Doctor and his bride elect, (for we are still in the Interim,)—he knows so much of the birth, parentage and education of both, so much of their respective characters, his way of thinking and her way of life, that we may pass to another of those questions propounded in the second post-initial chapter.

The minister of a very heterodox congregation in a certain large city, accosted one of his friends one day in the street with these words, which were so characteristic and remarkable that it was impossible not to remember and repeat them,—“I am considering whether I shall marry or keep a horse.” He was an eccentric person, as this anecdote may show; and his inspirited sermons (I must not call them inspired,) were thought in their style of eloquence and sublimity to resemble Klopstock's Odes.

No such dubitation could ever have entered the Doctor's head. Happy man, he had already one of the best horses in the world: (Forgive me, O Shade of Nobs in thine Elysian pastures, that I have so long delayed thy eulogy!)—and in Deborah he was about to have one of the best of wives.

If he had hesitated between a horse and a wife, he would have deserved to meet with a Grey Mare.