"Bravo!" he cried; "I told old Boneset so! I could watch as comfortably as ever a child's nurse of Messina. I thought I should have the child wake me with crying! I vow to gad, I've been snoozing all night. And so you've opened your peepers like an honest man at last, Dawky!--Pray, what the devil made you drown yourself?" And here the young gentleman, seizing me by the hand, fell a laughing again, and that with more zest than before. "Sah!" said I, looking at him with both surprise and confusion; for, though his voice and face seemed familiar to me, I could not for the life of me say who he was. "Sa--ah, really I--ah--" and here I stopped; for, first, I knew not what to say, and secondly, my bewildered looks set him into such a roar of merriment, that there was no saying a word to him. "Come, you dog," said he, with a grin here and a roar there, "don't be comical just after coming out of the grave. A man just fished out of a river, and rescued from death after a hard fight between the doctor and the devil, should be serious and ecclesiastical, solemn of visage, and sanctified of conversation. No joking, you dog; but get up, Absalomize, and talk. No joking, I say; no joking with Jack Tickle." As he spoke he seized me by the shoulder, and dragged me half out of bed. "Ged and demmee!" said I, "remember my foot!" For my toe catching in the bed-cord, I suddenly recollected the gouty member. "I will," said he, with another roar; "for, the Lord knows, 'tis the best part of you. Spoil Dawky's foot, and ruin him with women and shoe-makers for ever! The one ceases to adore, and the other trusts no longer." "But I mean the gout," said I. "The fiddlestick and fiddle!" said he: "whoever heard of a poor dandy, living on tick, having the gout? Up, Dawky, my dog, and tell me what set you to drowning? If 'twas about Betty Small, 'twas a small matter. What! drown for being jilted! If 'twas about the tailor's bill, 'twas still more ridiculous. I say, Dawky, my fellow, _what_ made you drown yourself?" "Drown myself!" said I; but I said it with a stare. The odd behaviour and expressions of the young gentleman, who called himself Jack Tickle (a name that I never remembered to have heard before in my life, although his countenance was certainly highly familiar), and certain queer associations his appearance gave birth to; the singularity of my feelings; and, more than all, the appearance of my foot and leg (the former of which, instead of being tumid and red with gout, was white, and of elegant shape, while the latter, which but the day before had a calf to compare with any old Quaker's in Arch-street, was now as lank as a sword-blade); I say, these circumstances had the effect to increase my confusion to that degree, that I felt like one who is asleep and knows it--provided one ever did or can feel so.