5<U PORTRAIT-GALLERY OF OLD BACHELORS. 



balancing the weight of argument advanced, now by one and now 

 by the other. 



TOE " Taste if you dare, but remember me ! " STOMACH 

 " The devil take you for a troublesome extremity! must I be 

 starved to accommodate you? you may grow red with anger if you 

 will, and be hanged to you ! " TOE " Well, well ! I Ml pay you if 

 you do! do you feel that?" STOMACH "Well, but Mr. Toe, 

 only this once just consider, if your impudence will permit, how 

 I shall enjoy it; do but smell, and your heart will relent." TOR 

 " I won't stand it, Mr. Stomach ! your pleasure is my pain, and if 

 you do, bread and water will be the best thing you shall enjoy for a 

 month." STOMACH "Confound you for a malicious imp! you 

 are the dog- in the manger ! why should I humour your accursed 

 temper ? taste I will, and drown the prickings of your spite in a sea 

 of pleasure." TOE " You will, will you? well, if J don't make 

 you repent, my name is not Toe!" STOMACH "Can't you be 

 reasonable ? " Here the dispute is brought to a sudden close by 

 the owner of the two intestine enemies, who had beforehand made 

 up his mind, pouring- into the stomach a spoonful of favourite soup, 

 which it receives, as we all do receive forbidden pleasures God help 

 us ! with double relish and the rebellious toe is heroically defied. 

 The comical expression upon the man's face too, when his appetite 

 is saturated and the remembrance of his gout rises up within him, 

 is indescribable. He looks for all the wprld like a school-boy, 

 who has stolen a penny cake, and been detected; and many a sigh 

 and many a groan circulate through his system, till the decanters are 

 in motion. " In for a penny, in for a pound,'' thinks the gouty 

 philosopher ; and his eye lightens, and his brow smooths, as the good 

 wine does its good office, his stomach being too busy about its own 

 affairs to mind the grumblings and remonstrances of the quaking 

 toe. It is amusing to hear how pathetically and magnanimously he 

 talks as he approaches his altitude no martyr at the stake is more 

 meritorious ; and he has a singular facility for conjuring up the exact 

 amount of suffering he must go through before his toe is delivered of 

 another stone. But this bug-bear is driven out of his imagination 

 after a time; and sportive, sparkling wit, apt anecdote, copious 

 illustration, and a good song, show the man's true metal ; and, to 

 crown all, he dances a hornpipe to demonstrate that fifty-five years 

 have left him the use of his muscles. 



These are the moments when those genial sons of mirth, gouty old 

 Bachelors, shine in all their_glory, and which afford them some com- 

 pensation for wedded bliss and paroxysms of pain. The morning 

 reflections may not, perhaps, be altogether so pleasant as the evening 

 recreations, and they may think it prudent to adopt precautionary 

 methods to warn off the foe : but gout, like love, won't be denied ; 

 and as the Greek Epigrammatist said of it 



" All defence to folly turns, 

 When within the battle burns." 



f them, like genuine stoics or gymnosophists, submit to their 



