So with William's assistance the Goose was tried. They began with due prudence, according to rule, by catching a Goose. In this matter a couple of Ducks Lord Lauderdale knows would not have answered as well. The boy then having gone through the ceremony which the devotees of Baal are said to have performed at the foot of his Image, as the highest act of devotion, (an act of super-reverence it was;) and for which the Jews are said to have called him in mockery Baalzebul, instead of Baalzebub;—cried out that he was ready. He was at that moment in the third of those eight attitudes which form a _Rik'ath_. My Readers who are versed in the fashionable Poets of the day (_this_ day I mean—their fashion not being insured for tomorrow)—such Readers, I say, know that a rose is called a ghul, and a nightingale a bulbul, and that this is one way of dressing up English Poetry in Turkish Costume. But if they desire to learn a little more of what Mahometan customs are, they may consult D'Ohsson's _Tableau_ of the Ottoman Empire, and there they may not only find the eight attitudes described, but see them represented. Of the third attitude or _Rukeou_ as it is denominated, I shall only say that the Ancients represented one of their Deities in it, and that it is the very attitude in which _As in præsenti_ committed that notorious act for which he is celebrated in scholastic and immortal rhyme, and for which poor Syntax bore the blame. _Verbum sit sat sapienti._ During the reign of Liberty and Equality, a Frenchman was guillotined for exemplifying it under Marat's Monument in the _Place du Carousal_. The bird was brought, but young Daniel had not the strength of young Gargantua; the goose, being prevented by William from drawing back, prest forward; they were by the side of the brook and the boy by this violent and unexpected movement was, as the French would say in the politest and most delicate of all languages, _culbuté_, or in sailors' English capsized into the water. The misfortune did not end there; for falling with his forehead against a stone, he received a cut upon the brow which left a scar as long as he lived. It was not necessary to prohibit a repetition of what William called the _speriment_. Both had been sufficiently frightened; and William never felt more pain of mind than on this occasion, when the Father with a shake of the head, a look of displeasure and a low voice told him he ought to have known better than to have put the lad upon such pranks! The mishap however was not without its use. For in after life when Daniel felt an inclination to do any thing which might better be left undone, the recollection that he had _tried the goose_ served as a salutary memento, and saved him perhaps sometimes from worse consequences. CHAPTER XIX. P. I. A CONVERSATION WITH MISS GRAVEAIRS.