Christopher North, form the predominant portion of mankind. In
appearance, the doctor was short-necked and puffy, with a sodden, pasty
face, wherein were set eyes whose obliquity of vision was, in some
measure, redeemed by their expression of humor. He was accounted a man
of parts and erudition, and had obtained high honors at his university.
Rigidly orthodox, he abominated the very names of Papists and Jacobites,
amongst which heretical herd he classed his companion, Mr. Titus
Tyrconnel--Ireland being with him synonymous with superstition and
Catholicism--and every Irishman rebellious and schismatical. On this
head he was inclined to be disputatious. His prejudices did not prevent
him from passing the claret, nor from laughing, as heartily as a
plethoric asthma and sense of the decorum due to the occasion would
permit, at the quips and quirks of the Irishman, who, he admitted,
notwithstanding his heresies, was a pleasant fellow in the main. And
when, in addition to the flattery, a pipe had been insinuated by the
officious Titus, at the precise moment that Small yearned for his
afternoon's solace, yet scrupled to ask for it; when the door had been
made fast, and the first whiff exhaled, all his misgivings vanished, and
he surrendered himself to the soft seduction. In this Elysian state we
find him.

"Ah! you may say that, Dr. Small," said Titus, in answer to some
observation of the vicar, "that's a most original apothegm. We all of us
hould our lives by a thrid. Och! many's the sudden finale I have seen.
Many's the fine fellow's heels tripped up unawares, when least expected.
Death hangs over our heads by a single hair, as your reverence says,
precisely like the sword of Dan Maclise,[6] the flatterer of Dinnish
what-do-you-call-him, ready to fall at a moment's notice, or no notice
at all--eh?--Mr. Coates. And that brings me back again to Sir
Piers--poor gentleman--ah! we sha'n't soon see the like of him again!"

"Poor Sir Piers!" said Mr. Coates, a small man, in a scratch wig, with a
face red and round as an apple, and almost as diminutive. "It is to be
regretted that his over-conviviality should so much have hastened his
lamented demise."

"Conviviality!" replied Titus; "no such thing--it was
apoplexy--extravasation of _sarum_."

"Extra vase-ation of rum and water, you mean," replied Coates, who, like
all his tribe, rejoiced in a quibble.

"The squire's ailment," continued Titus, "was a sanguineous effusion, as
w