To curb his tongue, however, out of respect to Abernethy's humour, was an impossibility to John Philpot Curran. Eight times Curran (personally unknown to Abernethy) had called on the great surgeon; and eight times Abernethy had looked at the orator's tongue (telling him, by-the-by, that it was the most unclean and utterly abominable tongue in the world), had curtly advised him to drink less, and not abuse his stomach with gormandizing, had taken a guinea, and had bowed him out of the room. On the ninth visit, just as he was about to be dismissed in the same summary fashion, Curran, with a flash of his dark eye, fixed the surgeon, and said--"Mr. Abernethy, I have been here on eight different days, and I have paid you eight different guineas; but you have never yet listened to the symptoms of my complaint. I am resolved, sir, not to leave the room till you satisfy me by doing so." With a good-natured laugh, Abernethy, half suspecting that he had to deal with a madman, fell back in his chair and said--"Oh! very well, sir; I am ready to hear you out. Go on, give me the whole--your birth, parentage, and education. I wait your pleasure. Pray be as minute and tedious as you can." With perfect gravity Curran began--"Sir, my name is John Philpot Curran. My parents were poor, but I believe honest people, of the province of Munster, where also I was born, at Newmarket, in the county of Cork, in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty. My father being employed to collect the rents of a Protestant gentleman of small fortune, in that neighbourhood, procured my admission into one of the Protestant free-schools, where I obtained the first rudiments of my education. I was next enabled to enter Trinity College, Dublin, in the humble sphere of a sizar--" And so he went steadily on, till he had thrown his auditor into convulsions of laughter.