"Yes," she replied; "he's dreadfully inclined to music since he had a drum, and I want the fiddle to see if I can't make another Pickaninny or an Old Bull of him. Jews-harps is simple, though I can't see how King David played on one of 'em, and sung his psalms at the same time; but the fiddle is best, because genius can show itself plainer on it without much noise. Some prefers a violeen; but I don't know." The fiddle was well improved, till the horsehair all pulled out of the bow, and it was then twisted up into a fish-line. XVI "How limpid you walk!" said a voice behind us, as we were making a hundred and fifty horse-power effort to reach a table whereon reposed a volume of Bacon. "What is the cause of your lameness?" It was Mrs. Partington's voice that spoke, and Mrs. Partington's eyes that met the glance we returned over our left shoulder. "Gout," said we, briefly, almost surlily. "Dear me," said she; "you are highly flavored! It was only rich people and epicacs in living that had the gout in olden times." "Ah!" we growled, partly in response, and partly with an infernal twinge, "Poor soul!" she continued, with commiseration, like an anodyne, in the tones of her voice; "the best remedy I know for it is an embarkation of Roman wormwood and lobelia for the part infected, though some say a cranberry poultice is best; but I believe the cranberries is for erisipilis, and whether either of 'em is a rostrum for the gout or not, I really don't know. If it was a fraction of the arm, I could jest know what to subscribe." We looked into her eye with a determination to say something severely bitter, because we felt allopathic just then; but the kind and sympathizing look that met our own disarmed severity, and sinking into a seat with our coveted Bacon, we thanked her. It was very evident, all the while, that she, or they, stayed, that Ike was seeing how near he could come to our lame member, and not touch it. He did touch it sometimes, but those didn't count. XX "I've always noticed," said Mrs. Partington on New Year's Day, dropping her voice to the key that people adopt when they are disposed to be philosophical or moral; "I've always noticed that every year added to a man's life is apt to make him older, just as a man who goes a journey finds, as he jogs on, that every mile he goes brings him nearer where he is going, and farther from where he started. I am not so young as I was once, and I don't believe I shall ever be, if I live to the age of Samson, which, Heaven knows as well as I do, I don't want to, for I wouldn't be a centurion or an octagon, and survive my factories, and become idiomatic, by any means. But then there is no knowing how a thing will turn out till it takes place; and we shall come to an end some day, though we may never live to see it." There was a smart tap on the looking-glass that hung upon the wall, followed instantly by another.