"Pretty good, that talk of Masusælili's through the faucet--pretty good, pretty good! But, pshaw! for me there's nothing new on earth. Why, sir, I've always drawn my best philosophy out of a spigot-hole. The very sight of a spigot inspires me, and drives away my troubles. But, man alive! We must keep this thing secret. The fellow with an exhaustless stock of _elixir vitæ_ isn't half worked out in fiction yet--and besides, how can a person reread his 'Wandering Jew,' and his 'Last Days of Pompeii,' and his 'Zanoni,' with such an outlandish picture as a mystic under a lamp-warmed vase in mind? Why didn't Bainbridge take a not unusual historical license, and say that the aged philosopher was found warming himself before a crystal vase filled with magically glowing rubies?" After we had laughed a little over this, he said: "And I suppose Bainbridge tried--in fact I know by what you say that he did try--to air his knowledge on the subject of animal heat? No doubt talked for half an hour about the effects of cold on the animal economy? Oh, he's a rapid man! You heard, sir, how idiotically he talked that day, just before I cured old man Peters? If Bainbridge had had his way, Peters' story would have been a short one. I suppose his remedy for a frozen Hili-lite would be to send him to the North Pole! Now, sir, I instantly grasped the whole idea of the necessary effect of that cold wave on those Hili-lites, for I now have data in abundance for reading those people through and through. In a word, sir--and observe my sententious brevity--their thermogenistic organization being adynamic, and their thermolysic functions being over-active owing to their thermic environment, and the thermotaxic balance being habitually anomalous, the emergency was not successfully encountered; and this was more particularly the case because the nerve-centres of vital resistance to sudden and extreme thermal abstraction were atrophied." This was the last remark, except a few words of farewell at the time of my departure for home, that I ever heard from Doctor Castleton. It was his habit, as he was about to leave the presence of an auditor or interlocutor, to fire off, so to speak, a set speech, or a piece of surprising information, and then hastily to retreat--a habit displaying considerable sagacity, and one engendered by street-corner discussion, in which a return fire--or perhaps a troublesome question--was often to be avoided if a dramatic climax was not to be sacrificed. On this occasion, as the last words left his lips he vanished through the doorway, and we were alone. "Well," said Arthur, "am I allowed to speak?" "You are," I replied.