Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/352

to be one: that's the point of the compass! Place me in juxtaposition with any man in Europe—I don't care who he is!—and if he knows anything of history, he'll find I can tell him what's what. You may call me a fool just as long as you please: I don't care a button about what you call me. Prove me to be one—that's the teaser my boy!—prove me,if you can, to be a boney fide fool, and I'll stand glasses round."

"What do you mean by boney fide?" inquired Pokey.

"Boney fide! Send I may live! What, don't you know what boney fide means? Where did you go to school? Who had the fructification of your ignorant ideas? Boney fide means out-and-out of course. A boney fide fool, is an out-and-out fool; and I should like to see the man who can prove me to be one."

"I should like to see the man who can prove that you are not one," said Quocks, who indignantly finished his beer, and then, without condescending to utter another syllable, left them.

"Poor Quocks!" cried Obadiah. "He can't bear to be beaten! I don't like to be hard upon any man alive, but I can't help being a little hard upon him: he's so ignorant of history."

"But you don't mean to say—" observed Pokey, "you can't mean to say, that you've beaten him this morning!"

"Beaten him! What did he run away for? I'd beat half a million of men like him before breakfast! Why, I'll bet you what you like that, if you were to offer him five hundred pounds, he couldn't tell you who Peter the Great's mother was! What's the use of a man like that. I don't want to boast, but he's no more fit to be put in juxtaposition with me, than Bobby Peel is fit to be put in juxtaposition with Julius Cæsar. There's nothing in him! In all that relates to boney fide argument, he's what I should call a mere non compos; and he knows just as much about fructifying logic as Harry the Eighth knew about this pint pot. The mind of a man must be properly amalgamated to be in a juxtaposition to stand against one who has studied things as I have. Study's the point, my boys! no getting on without study. Study will beat the world hollow; and Quocks has got no study in him."

"Well," said Pokey, "I must go to work. I've got a pair of buckskins to finish to day."

"Business must be attended to," observed Obadiah; who, notwithstanding the loss of Pokey, continued to work his amalgamated fructifying boney fide juxtaposition until he was left quite alone.

Sylvester, meanwhile, deeply reflected, not only upon the events of the preceding night, but upon the whole of the equally mysterious circumstances which had occurred to him since he left the house of Mr. Scholefield. The event, however, upon which he dwelt chiefly, was that which formed the ground of Sir Charles Julian's action; and when he viewed the nature of the evidence against him, in connexion with the idea of his being a somnambulist, it appeared to him to be perfectly clear that to nothing but somnambulism could it be ascribed.

But how was the fact of his being a somnambulist to be proved? That was the primary question. The readiest and most effectual way of proving it appeared to be that of communicating the idea to some one