After dinner, I began with my usual toast, the Church; for this I was thanked by the chaplain, as he said the Church was the only mistress of his affections. "Come, tell us honestly, Frank," said the squire, with his usual archness, "suppose the Church, your present mistress, dressed in lawn sleeves, on one hand, and Miss Sophia, with no lawn about her, on the other, which would you be for?" "For both, to be sure," cried the chaplain, "Right, Frank!" cried the squire; "for may this glass suffocate me, but a fine girl is worth all the priestcraft in the creation; for what are tithes and tricks but an imposition, all a confounded imposture? and I can prove it." "I wish you would," cried my son Moses; "and I think," continued he, "that I should be able to answer you." "Very well, sir," cried the squire, who immediately smoked him, and winked on the rest of the company to prepare us for the sport: "if you are for a cool argument upon the subject, I am ready to accept the challenge. And first, whether are you for managing it analogically or dialogically?" "I am for managing it rationally," cried Moses, quite happy at being permitted to dispute. "Good again!" cried the squire; "and, firstly, of the first I hope you'll not deny that whatever is, is: if you don't grant me that, I can go no further." "Why," returned Moses, "I think I may grant that, and make the best of it." "I hope, too," returned the other, "you will grant that a part is less than the whole?" "I grant that too," cried Moses: "it is but just and reasonable." "I hope," cried the squire, "you will not deny, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones?" "Nothing can be plainer," returned t'other, and looked round him with his usual importance. "Very well," cried the squire, speaking very quick; "the premises being thus settled, I proceed to observe, that the concatenation of self-existences, proceeding in a reciprocal duplicate ratio, naturally produce a problematical dialogism, which, in some measure, proves that the essence of spirituality may be referred to the second predicable." "Hold, hold!" cried the other, "I deny that. Do you think I can thus tamely submit to such heterodox doctrines?" "What!" replied the squire, as if in a passion, "not submit! Answer me one plain question. Do you think Aristotle right when he says that relatives are related?" "Undoubtedly," replied the other. "If so, then," cried the squire, "answer me directly to what I propose: Whether do you judge the analytical investigation of the first part of my enthymem deficient _secundum quoad_, or _quoad minus_? and give me your reasons, I say, directly." "I protest," cried Moses, "I don't rightly comprehend the force of your reasoning; but if it be reduced to one single, proposition, I fancy it may then have an answer." "Oh, sir," cried the squire, "I am your most humble servant: I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too. No, sir! there I protest you are