"Sit down, sir," said one, and his voice sounded far away, as if in another world, as I tottered to the chair, and with palsied arm helped myself to a glass of water, which had been placed on the table for my use. The water revived me, and at the first task I was asked to perform--translate a small portion of Gregory's (not powder) Conspectus into English--my senses came back. The scales fell from my eyes, the table and fire resumed their proper places, the roof and carpet ceased to dally, my scattered brains came all of a heap once more, and I was myself again as much as ever Richard was, or any other man. I answered most of the questions, if not all. I was tackled for ten minutes at a time by each of the examiners. I performed mental operations on the limbs of beings who never existed, prescribed hypothetically for innumerable ailments, brought divers mythical children into the world, dissected muscles and nerves in imagination, talked of green trees, fruit, flowers, natural families, and far-away lands, as if I had been Linnaeus, Columbus, and Humboldt all in one, so that, in less than an hour, the august body leant their backs against their respective chairs, and looked knowingly in each other's faces for a period of several very long seconds. They then nodded to one another, did this august body, looked at their tablets, and nodded again. After this pantomime had come to a conclusion I was furnished with a sheet of foolscap and sent back to the room above the Thames to write a dissertation on fractures of the cranium, and shortly after sending it in I was recalled and informed that I had sustained the dread ordeal to their entire satisfaction, etc, and that I had better, before I left the house, pay an official visit to the Director-General. I bowed, retired, heaved a monster sigh, made the visit of ceremony, and afterwards my exit. The first gentleman (?) I met on coming out was a short, middle-aged Shylock, hook-nosed and raven-haired, and arrayed in a surtout of seedy black. He approached me with much bowing and smiling, and holding below my nose a little green tract which he begged I would accept. "Exceedingly kind," thought I, and was about to comply with his request, when, greatly to my surprise and the discomposure of my toilet, an arm was hooked into mine, I was wheeled round as if on a pivot, and found myself face to face with another Israelite armed with a _red_ tract. "He is a Jew and a dog," said this latter, shaking a forefinger close to my face. "Is he?" said I. The words had hardly escaped my lips when the other Jew whipped his arm through mine and quickly re-wheeled me towards him. "He is a liar and a cheat," hissed he, with the same motion of the forefinger as his rival had used. "Indeed!" said I, beginning to wonder what it all meant. I had not, however, long time to wonder, being once more set spinning by the Israelite of the red tract.