request.' 'Oh!' said the lady, 'it is impossible to deny a solicitation urged in a manner so complimentary; pray proceed, Doctor, with your argument.' ('Go on,' from all sides.) 'You see,' said Dr. Ticklemore, 'I had not said half I intended to say when I was interrupted; but now that the sequence of the propositions has been broken, I am required to go on. It will not be so easy for me to show their logical dependence one on the other as it would have been. The fact is,' continued the Doctor, 'you were most of you in such a hurry to condemn me, that you would not let me speak when I was ready to do so, and now I must rearrange my ideas.' 'We admit you have been very ill used,' said Lady Jervois, 'but pray go on. We are all sure that there will be no difficulty about your ideas if you don't make any. Once more we pray of you to proceed.' 'Pray go on,' said Captain Ward; 'you may be sure, after this alarming preface, he has more crackers to let off.' ('Go on, Doctor; go on,' from all sides.) 'Well,' said the Doctor, 'to stop me in the middle of my speech, as you have done, is rather an Irish mode of getting me to go on, isn't it? But I suppose it's like the remark about the crackers, to be taken by contraries; you say, go on, but I apprehend you mean, go off!' More tittering and laughter, but this time the Doctor would not be stopped. He continued thus: 'You, Captain Ward, have gravely affirmed that I am someone's double, which is neither more nor less than stating that I am a ghost, an immaterial airy nothing; but let me tell you that it is not immaterial to me to be made nothing of; it is not treating me with the respect due to a man of my weight. Besides, although you are so ready to deny my gravity, and to accuse me of lightness in many respects, even in my behaviour, you will find that the force which pulls all things over the surface of the globe towards its centre requires upwards of twelve stone to counterbalance my corporeal entity, which, I take it, is a very good material proof that if I am a ghost, or, as you term it, a double, I am also an individual of some weight. Now if I am myself and also a double, I must be something besides myself; for such a one to attempt to comply with Captain Ward's request would not only prove him to be an insane double, but doubly insane; therefore you see----'