98 " JACKO PLAYS TRICKS. 



" Csesar " the dog, " Doodle " the cat, and occasionally 

 guinea-pigs and urchins, had their freedom of run in the 

 establishment ; the birds were caged, and the great eagle 

 stood Prometheus-like on his Caucasus ; whilst shut up 

 in the attics, or claiming part of the cook's precincts, and 

 in improvised aquaria or vivaria, were frogs, fishes, 

 molluscs, echinoderms, and various odds and ends of 

 Invertebrata. These animals were nearly all meant for 

 physiological observation, and occasionally furnished the 

 anatomists with a blood-globule, a muscular fibre, and 

 ciliated epithelium. As the ranks of this living motley 

 fell away- — for amidst such a marine, aerial, and land 

 population life flowed and ebbed, and oft departed — - 

 the organisms, on ceasing their physiological functious, 

 obtained the obsequies of the scalpel, the injecting- 

 syringe, the spirit -jar, or macerating -tub ; and, as 

 mementoes of once familiar faces, skins and crania for 

 conservation might be seen hanging like banners on 

 the outward wall or attic's roof. This semi-menagerie 

 and its mortuary relics, conveying to more senses than 



on the gill of the haddock, Mr. Day came to have doubts as to the validity 

 of fish in general ; and as haddocks and potatoes were staple dishes in the 

 establishment, his gastronomic squeamishuess could only be allayed by Good- 

 sir's assurance of the parasitic freedom of every fish, and the cook's declaration 

 that "Jacko" was chained up during the preparation of the "gentlemen's 

 dinner. " 



"Jacko," in a roving humour, descended by the spout on the outside 

 wall to a lower storey, and finding the kitchen-window open walked in, to the 

 great dismay of the female inmate. Knowing nothing of the curious house- 

 hold above, and being much engrossed, as nearly all Scotch folk were at the 



time, with the threatened disruption in the Kirk, Mrs. looked upon 



the intruder, whose presence was as mysterious as his person was horrid in her 

 eyes, as "spiritually uncanny;" nay, as "the chains were broken," had not 

 " the thousand years " ended, and here was " Beelzebub liimsel' ! " 



