"In the situation supposed," said the Professor, "it is highly probable that Mr. Seddon would first have vigorously titillated the top of his head, and then picked up the pippin and devoured it." "It was not so with the great Newton," said Toney. "The sudden shock which his cranium received awakened an idea, and that idea expanded into a magnificent system of philosophy. And so it was with M. T. Pate." "Did Pate sit under an apple-tree?" asked Tom. "No," said Toney; "it was a cherry-tree. He was seated on the greensward under its shade, when his attention was attracted to the curious pranks of a couple of urchins. They had paper caps on their heads with the tail-feathers of a rooster stuck in their crowns. Pate heard one of the little fellows say, 'I'll be Bonaparte,' and his companion immediately rejoined that he was Wellington. The illustrious Napoleon was armed with a bean-pole, and the Iron Duke held in his hand the fragment of a fishing-rod. After marching and countermarching, and performing many difficult evolutions, the martial enthusiasm of Napoleon finally rose to such a pitch that he could no longer restrain himself. As impetuously as when he was leading his valiant legions over the bridge of Lodi, he charged upon Wellington, and, before the latter could parry the thrust, inserted the end of the bean-pole in his mouth, to the no small damage of his ivory. The hero of Waterloo having his mouth thus unexpectedly opened, gave utterance to a cry which was, by no means, so warlike as might have been anticipated. It had the effect to bring a certain belligerent dame to the door, who had thus got an intimation that hostilities had actually commenced between Bonaparte and Wellington. She sallied forth, and seizing upon the illustrious Napoleon, she laid him over her lap, and gave him what, in the technical phraseology of the nursery, is termed a good spanking. Poor Bonaparte bellowed lustily under the operation, and as soon as he had escaped from the hands of his ruthless captor, went and sat on the sill of the door and sobbed sorrowfully over his disgrace. All his martial enthusiasm had been suddenly quenched. 'No sound could awake him to glory again,' and for the space of one whole hour he indignantly refused to eat even gingerbread." "I can sympathize with poor Bonaparte," said the Professor, "for I was once the unhappy victim of a similar misfortune in days gone by, when I was not much taller than a gooseberry-bush. I had been diligently perusing that good old book, the Pilgrim's Progress, and under the delusion that I was the valiant Great-heart, I assaulted an urchin who was supposed to be Giant Despair. I overcame the giant, and was imprisoned in the pantry, and afterwards tried, and convicted, and sentenced to undergo the cruel ordeal of a tough twig for a forcible entry into sundry jars of jelly. But what impression did the fall of Napoleon make upon the mind of M. T. Pate?"