The fever patient was so infuriated with what he naturally regarded as impertinence, that he sent a pathetic statement of the insult offered him to Mutchkin. On questioning his pupil as to what he meant by accusing a man, reduced with sickness, of having consumed so large and tough an animal, the doctor was answered-- "Why, sir, as I passed through from the yard I saw the saddle hanging up in the kitchen." This story is a very ancient one. It may possibly be found in one of the numerous editions of Joe Miller's facetiæ. The writer has, however, never met with it in print, and the first time he heard it, Dr. Mutchkin, of Flintbeach, was made to figure in it in the matter above described. The shrewdness of Mutchkin's apprentice puts us in mind of the sagacity of the hydropathic doctor, mentioned in the "Life of Mr Assheton Smith." A gentleman devoted to fox-hunting and deep potations was induced, by the master of the Tedworth Hunt, to have recourse to the water cure, and see if it would not relieve him of chronic gout, and restore something of the freshness of youth. The invalid acted on the advice, and in obedience to the directions of a hydropathic physician, proceeded to swathe his body, upon going to his nightly rest, with wet bandages. The air was chill, and the water looked--very--cold. The patient shivered as his valet puddled the bandages about in the cold element. He paused, as a schoolboy does, before taking his first "header" for the year on a keen May morning; and during the pause much of his noble resolve oozed away. "John," at last he said to his valet, "put into that d---- water half a dozen bottles of port wine, to warm it." John having carried out the direction, the bandages, saturated with port wine and water, were placed round the corpulent trunk of the invalid. The next morning the doctor, on paying his visit and inspecting the linen swathes, instead of expressing astonishment at their discoloration with the juice of the grape, observed, with the utmost gravity:-- "Ah, the system is acting beautifully. See, the port wine is already beginning to leave you!"