reason, like the Thistle,
Zeherit? I say again, give up your lonely way of life. You will be the
better for it. How many women have you known, that you should take
Doertje for the handsomest of her sex? What maiden have you approached
with love, that you should believe that Doertje alone can love you? Go
to, Peregrine; experience will show you better. You are a well-made,
handsome man, and I should not be so keen-sighted, as Master Flea
really is, if I could not see beforehand that love would smile upon you
in a very different way from what you may expect."

Peregrine had already broken the ice by going abroad in public places,
and it was therefore the less difficult for him to visit societies,
from which he had formerly withdrawn himself. In this Master Flea
rendered him excellent service with his microscopic glass, and he is
said during this time to have kept a day-book, and to have made notes
of the most remarkable and pleasant contradictions between words and
thoughts, as they daily occurred to him. Perhaps the editor of this
strange tale, called Master Flea, may find some future opportunity of
bringing to light many worthy impartments from this same day-book; here
it would only stop the current of the history, and, therefore, would
not be welcome to the reader. So much, however, may be said, that many
of the phrases with the corresponding thoughts seemed to be stereotyped
as it were; as for example,--"Favour me with your advice;"--the thought
being, "He is fool enough to think I ask his advice in a matter that I
have long since resolved upon, and that tickles him." "I have the most
perfect confidence in you;"--the thought being, "I knew long ago that
you were a scoundrel," &c. c. It should also be mentioned that many
folks mightily puzzled Peregrine with his microscopic observations.
These were the young men, who fell into raptures upon every thing, and
poured themselves forth in a torrent of splendid phrases. Amongst these
the most remarkable were the young poets, who were boiling over with
imagination and genius, and were particularly adored by the ladies. To
these were associated the blue-stockings, who were as familiar with
metaphysics as the less learned part of their sex with scandal, and
could talk like any parson in his pulpit. If it seemed strange to
Peregrine that the silver threads should twine together out of
Gamaheh's brain into an undistinguishable something, he was not a
little astonished at what he