pt
all day, and could not be consoled, because of all the people outside
the asylum being mad."

"But," he gasped, "the thing is there."

"No doubt on't," said I, "and you ought to be grateful. I have read
somewhere of one John Zopyrus, who went mad when he heard of a son being
born to him; and here you are not mad, though you have a son (I hope)
born to you, with ten diamonds besides."

"But the thing is there," he again cried.

"Ay, there's the rub, my dear fellow; the rub is there--let the rub _be_
there; that is, go and rub, and the thing rubbed will not be there after
the rubbing."

"Madness, man! It is a true mother's mark."

"Verily, a real _noevus maternus_" said I, "impressed by an avenging
angel on the mother's brain, and transferred by nature's daguerreotype
to the back of the child."

"You have said it."

"Nay, it is you who have said it," I continued; "and I will even suppose
it is a mother's mark, to please you for a little, though it has no more
that character than this sword-prick in my left cheek. But taking it in
your own way, I have a theory I could propound to you about these marks.
We say that the soul is in the body. It is just as true that the body
is in the soul. Every member of the entire physical person is
represented in the brain, though we cannot discern the form in these
white viscera. Now, see you, if a man loses his finger, his son will not
be awanting in that member. But there are cases where the want of a
member is hereditary. Why? Because the member was not represented in the
cerebral microcosm of the first deficient person. From this small
epitome in the brain, the child is an extended copy--_extended_ from a
mathematical point, where all the members and lineaments are _intended_.
So, when the fancy of the mother is working in the brain--say, in
realizing some external image--it will impress it in the cerebral person
(woman) there epitomized; and if she is in a certain way, the image will
go to a corresponding part of the foetal point, which is the epitome of
the child. A most ingenious, and satisfactory, and simple theory, which
will explain the ten-of-diamond naevus, for"----

"Dreadful imbecility!" he exclaimed, as he threw himself on his chair;
"most unaccountable and cruel trifling with a notable visitation of
retributive justice, indicated by visible signs of terrible import to
him who must bear the cross, and be reconciled to an angry Deity."

"Against all that may