Now as the one pursuit and end of my present existence is the discovery of rarae aves, I need not say I at once took up the clue herein afforded, and went in pursuit of Joseph Ashman. I found not only him but his institution, for Mr. Ashman does not work single-handed. It is in the Marylebone Road, almost opposite the Yorkshire Stingo; and is most modest and unpretending in its outward semblance, being situated in one of those semi-rustic houses so indicative of suburban London, down an overstocked garden, into which you enter by means of a blistered iron gate, painted violently green, and swinging heavily on its hinges. Down a vista of decrepit dahlias one sped to the portal, alongside which was a trio of bell-handles, one above the other, showing that the Psychopathic Institution did not occupy the whole even of that modest domicile. I always approach these manifold bells with considerable diffidence, conscious that I must inevitably ring the wrong one; so, on this occasion, I rang none at all, but knocked a faint double knock on the knocker by way of compromise--very faint, indeed, lest I should disturb any patients who were being "psychopathized." While I waited I had leisure to observe that hidden among the dahlias, and thatched over as it were with a superannuated costermonger's barrow, was a double perambulator, which set me calculating the probabilities of Mr. Ashman being a family man. The door was opened before I had settled the point to my own mental satisfaction, by a short, cheery-looking man, with long, straight flaxen hair flowing down over the shoulders of his black frock-coat, a beard a few shades lighter, and a merry twinkling eye, which looked more sympathetic than psychopathic, and I should think was calculated to do patients good directly it lighted on them. He looked as much as to ask whether I was psychopathically wrong, when I informed him that I had not come as a patient, but simply to inspect his institution if he would permit me. The permission was at once accorded. "We are hard at work," he said, as he ushered me into the front parlour; "but come in and see what we are about." A man who looked like a respectable artisan was sitting at the table; and a second, in his shirt sleeves, was astride of a chair in what appeared to be rather an idiotic ride-a-cock-horse-to-Banbury-Cross fashion, and Mr. Ashman was pinching him and prodding him as butchers do fat animals at the Smithfield Show. "That there gentleman," said Mr. Ashman, in a broad provincial dialect, "couldn't get astride that chair when he come here half-an-hour ago. How d'ye feel now, sir?"