_Bluphocks._ So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop's Intendant's money shall be honestly earned:--now, don't make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop's name into the business; we know he can have nothing to do with such 5 horrors; we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. _Oh, were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot, Every tune a jig!_ In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to was the Armenian: for 10 I have traveled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark over a venerable house-porch a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of 15 every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity: 'twas the Grand Rabbi's abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac--(these are vowels, you dogs--follow 20 my stick's end in the mud--_Celarent, Darii, Ferio!_) and one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand, a, b, c--I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the past, you'll say--"_How Moses hocus-pocussed_ 25 _Egypt's land with fly and locust_"--or, "_How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish_"--or, "_How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned a salaam._" In no wise! "_Shackabrack--Boach--somebody or other--Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser, and_ 30 _Ex-chan-ger of--Stolen Goods!_" So, talk to me of the religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save Bishop Beveridge--mean to live so--and die--_As some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in Charon's wherry with food for both worlds, under and_ 35 _upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate's supper, and never an obolus._ (Though thanks to you, or this Intendant through you, or this Bishop through his Intendant--I possess a burning pocketful of _zwanzigers_) _To pay Stygian Ferry!_ _1st Policeman._ There is the girl, then; go and deserve 40 them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor Luigi and his mother. [_To the rest._] I have been noticing a house yonder, this long while--not a shutter unclosed since morning!