ight that caused Dr. Skihi to commit such a breach of good manners
was Dr. Sheepshanks in the very middle of a summersault! with his
flowered dressing gown about his ears and his spindle shanks and black
stockings in the air, looking not unlike a two-legged radish growing
upside down.

To him rushed Dr. Skihi, who, catching his friend by the tails of his
dressing gown, had him right side up in a hurry, exclaiming, "Crucibles
and gasbags! my good sir, have you gone crazy?"

"No, indeed," returned Dr. Sheepshanks, with a gleeful laugh. "I have
made a discovery, sir--a great discovery. I happened to look out of the
window, a moment ago, and I saw a couple of little chaps racing up and
down, and playing at that topsy-turvy game you saw me trying just now.
Their cheeks were so fat, and their frames so sturdy, that I feel
convinced such exercises are the best promoters of health in the world;
and as I am getting rather broken down myself, while I am finding out
what is the best way for other people to keep healthy, I thought I would
try the experiment. It does make the blood rush to the head somewhat, I
must confess; but it's a glorious thing, you may depend! I feel twenty
years younger and better already, I assure you!"

All this time Dr. Sheepshanks was puffing and panting, with a very red
face and astonished air; but the new theory had taken possession of him,
and he would have died at the stake rather than allow that turning
summersaults was not the exercise best adapted to old gentlemen of
sixty.

Finding his friend so prepossessed in favor of exercise, Dr. Skihi
proposed to him that they should go and take a walk, to which he readily
agreed. Then they went to Dr. Smelfungus, the great botanist, who was
at present trying to graft japonicas on bramble bushes: "It would
improve the appearance of the roadside so much!" and Dr. Van Noostile,
who was writing a splendid work, in twenty-five volumes, to prove that
people's feeling hot and cold was perfect fancy and nonsense; and also
giving a number of scientific ways of finding out whether it would rain
or be clear, and what time o' day it was, without looking to see if the
wind were east, or running to stare at a clock; which, no doubt, would
be of the greatest use to the world, and leave all the weathercocks and
watchmakers quite in the shade. Last of all, they came to Dr. Mumbudget,
who had on his study door the great doorplate you see in the picture,
with his name engr