“Ahem!” replied my friend, taking off his coat with a deep sigh, tying a pocket-handkerchief around his waist, and producing an unaccountable alteration in his countenance by twisting up his eyes, and bringing down the corners of his mouth—“ahem!” And “ahem,” said he again, after a pause; and devil the word more than “ahem!” did I ever know him to say after that. “Aha!” thought I, without expressing myself aloud—“This is quite a remarkable silence on the part of my friend, Toby Dammit, and is no doubt a consequence of his great verbosity upon a previous occasion. One extreme induces another. I wonder if he has forgotten the many unanswerable questions which he propounded to me so fluently on the day when I gave him my last lecture? At all events he is cured of the transcendentals.” “Ahem!” here replied Toby, just as if he had been reading my thoughts, and looking like a very old sheep in a reverie. The old gentleman now took him by the arm, and led him more into the shade of the bridge—a few paces back from the turnstile. “My good fellow,” said he, “I make it a point of conscience to allow you this much run. Wait here till I take my place by the stile, so that I may see whether you go over it handsomely, and transcendentally, and don’t omit any flourishes of the pigeon-wing. A mere form, you know. I will say ‘one, two, three, and away.’ Mind you start at the word ‘away.’” Here he took his position by the stile, paused a moment as if in profound reflection, then looked down, then _looked up_, and, I thought, smiled very slightly, then tightened the strings of his apron, then took a long look at Dammit, then put his fore-finger to the side of his nose, and finally gave the word as agreed upon— _One—two—three—and away!_ Punctually, at the word “away,” my poor friend set off in a strong gallop. The style was not very high, like Mr. Pue’s—nor yet to say very low like that of Mr. Pue’s reviewers, but upon the whole I made sure that he would clear it. And then what if he did not?—ah, that was the question—what if he did not? “What right,” said I, “had the old gentleman to make any other gentleman jump? The little old dot-and-carry-one! who is _he_? If he asks me to jump, I won’t do it, that’s flat, and I don’t care who _the devil he is_.” The bridge, as I say, was arched and covered in, in a very ridiculous manner, and there was a most uncomfortable echo about it at all times—an echo which I never before so particularly observed as when I uttered the four last words of my remark.