Dr. Riccabocca adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the ass. The ass pricked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr. Riccabocca. In that mutual survey of physical qualifications, each being regarded according to the average symmetry of its species, it may be doubted whether the advantage was on the side of the philosopher. The Parson had a great notion of the wisdom of his friend, in all matters not immediately ecclesiastical. “Say a good word for the donkey!” whispered he. “Sir,” said the Doctor, addressing Mr. Sprott, with a respectful salutation, “there’s a great kettle at my house—the Casino—which wants soldering: can you recommend me a Tinker?” “Why, that’s all in my line,” said Sprott, “and there ben’t a Tinker in the country that I vould recommend like myself, thof I say it.” “You jest, good sir,” said the Doctor, smiling pleasantly. “A man who can’t mend a hole in his own donkey, can never demean himself by patching up my great kettle.” “Lord, sir!” said the Tinker, archly, “if I had known that poor Neddy had had two sitch friends in court, I’d have seen he was a gintleman, and treated him as sitch.” “_Corpo di Bacco_.” quoth the Doctor, “though that jest’s not new, I think the Tinker comes very well out of it.” “True; but the donkey!” said the Parson, “I’ve a great mind to buy it.” “Permit me to tell you an anecdote in point,” said Dr. Riccabocca. “Well?” said the Parson, interrogatively. “Once in a time,” pursued Riccabocca, “the Emperor Adrian, going to the public baths, saw an old soldier, who had served under him, rubbing his back against the marble wall. The emperor, who was a wise, and therefore a curious, inquisitive man, sent for the soldier, and asked him why he resorted to that sort of friction. ‘Because,’ answered the veteran, ‘I am too poor to have slaves to rub me down.’ The emperor was touched, and gave him slaves and money. The next day, when Adrian went to the baths, all the old men in the city were to be seen rubbing themselves against the marble as hard as they could. The emperor sent for them, and asked them the same question which he had put to the soldier; the cunning old rogues, of course, made the same answer. ‘Friends,’ said Adrian, ‘since there are so many of you, you will just rub one another!’ Mr. Dale, if you don’t want to have all the donkeys in the county with holes in their shoulders, you had better not buy the Tinker’s!” “It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of good,” groaned the Parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped it in two, and flung the fragments on the road—one of them hit the donkey on the nose. If the ass could have spoken Latin, he would have said, “_Et tu, Brute!_” As it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on.