ights of the most fertile valleys (which, as he justly
observed, was the greater danger of the two), leading them over flinty
paths, hungry and cold, in order to try their tempers; and setting up
establishments with the most awkward peasants for servants, to ascertain
the depth of Chatterissa's philosophy; with a variety of similar
ingenious devices, that will readily suggest themselves to all who have
any matrimonial experience, whether they live in palaces or cottages.
When this part of the trial was successfully terminated (the result
having shown that the gentle Chatterissa was of proof, so far as mere
temper was concerned), the whole party were ordered off to the barrier
of ice, which divides the monikin from the human region, with a view to
ascertain whether the warmth of their attachment was of a nature likely
to resist the freezing collisions of the world. Here, unfortunately,
(for the truth must be said), an unlucky desire of Dr. Reasono, who was
already F. U. D. G. E., but who had a devouring ambition to become also
M. O. R. E., led him into the extreme imprudence of pushing through
an opening, where he had formerly discovered an island, on an ancient
expedition of the same sort; and on which island he thought he saw a
rock, that formed a stratum of what he believed to be a portion of the
forty thousand square miles that were discomposed by the great eruption
of the earth's boiler. The philosopher foresaw a thousand interesting
results that were dependent on the ascertaining of this important
fact; for all the learning of Leaphigh having been exhausted, some five
hundred years before, in establishing the greatest distance to which any
fragment had been thrown on that memorable occasion, great attention had
latterly been given to the discovery of the least distance any fragment
had been hurled. Perhaps I ought to speak tenderly of the consequences
of a learned zeal, but it was entirely owing to this indiscretion that
the whole party fell into the hands of certain mariners who were sealing
on the northern shores of this very island, (friends and neighbors, as
it afterwards appeared, of Captain Poke), who remorselessly seized upon
the travellers, and sold them to a homeward-bound India-man, which they
afterwards fell in with near the island of St. Helena--St. Helena! the
tomb of him who is a model to all posterity, for the moderation of his
desires, the simplicity of his character, a deep veneration for
truth, prof