Where we are at this present reading, the attentive reader cannot but know; and if the careless one has lost himself, it is his fault, not mine. We are in the parenthesis between the Doctor's courtship and his marriage. Life has been called a parenthesis between our birth and death; the history of the human race is but a parenthesis between two cataclasms of the globe which it inhabits; time itself only a parenthesis in eternity. The interval here, as might be expected after so summary a wooing, was not long; no settlements being required, and little preparation. But it is not equally necessary for me to fix the chapter, as it was for them to fix the day. Montaigne tells us that he liked better to forge his mind than to furnish it. I have a great liking for old Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne, which the well-read reader may have perceived;—who indeed has ever made his acquaintance without liking him? I have moreover some sympathies with him; but upon this point we differ. It is more agreeable to me to furnish than to forge,—intellectually speaking, to lay in than to lay out;—to eat than to digest. There is however (following the last similitude) an intermediate process enjoyed by the flocks and herds, but denied to Aldermen; that process affords so apt a metaphor for an operation of the mind, that the word denoting it has passed into common parlance in its metaphorical acceptation, and its original meaning is not always known to those who use it. It is a pleasure to see the quiet full contentment which is manifested both in the posture and look of animals when they are chewing the cud. The nearest approach which humanity makes toward a similar state of feeling, seems to be in smoking, when the smoker has any intellectual cud on which to chew. But ruminating is no wholesome habit for man, who, if he be good for any thing, is born as surely to action as to trouble;—it is akin to the habit of indulging in day dreams, which is to be eschewed by every one who tenders his or her own welfare. There is however a time for every thing. And though neither the Doctor nor Deborah had thought of each other in the relation of husband and wife, before the proposal was made, and the silent assent given, they could not chuse but ruminate upon the future as well as the past, during the parenthesis that ensued. And though both parties deliberately approved of what had been suddenly determined, the parenthesis was an uneasy time for both. The commentators tell us that readers have found some difficulty in understanding what was Shakespear's meaning when he made Macbeth say If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly.