tution. Will you, Squire, give me the pleasure and allow
me the happiness of introducing and bringing to your acquaintance my
friend Mr. Pope? Squire Foster,--Mr. Pope."

"How did you leave Mrs. Hill and family?" asked the Squire.

"It gives me no ordinary pain, and no usual grief, and no common sorrow,
to inform and instruct you that I left Mrs. Hill, my dear wife, my
choice companion, subject to, and suffering from, and enduring under, a
severe and trying affectation of her respiratory organs, superinduced by
an exaggerant cold, received, and taken, and caught by her the other day
of last week, when we were travelling, and riding, and going to the
village of Burnley. My little ones, my children, my offspring, Squire, I
am excussitated to say, are in the finest, the best, the happiest state
of their juvenile physique that I have ever known, remembered, and borne
in mind."

"How is your son John, the little fellow with whom I was so much pleased
when I was at your house last?" enquired Squire Foster.

"He is a unique adolescent--a heavenly cherub. His excessively
prodigious development of juvenile intellectual and religious numerous
tendencies produce within me the largest, the greatest, the richest
exquisite emotions of deep pleasurability, and profoundest sensations of
unparalleled wonderment."

"You are very eloquent this morning," said the Squire, rather
sarcastically.

Mr. Hill, considering himself a little flattered by this encomium, said,
"My eloquence, sir, is the natural, the habitual, the spontaneous, the
unprompted infusions of my own individuality of mental hallucinations,
sparkling out in the scintillations which you do me the honour of
denominating, and calling, and epithetising as eloquence."

Mr. Hill was something of a transcendentalist in his way. The Squire was
aware of his tendency in this direction, and not having a distinct idea
of what his transcendentalism was, he ventured to ask him during the
conversation to give him a definition of it. After a brief pause, as
though Mr. Hill was meditating for a succinct and clear definition, he
said,--

"I would define transcendentalism as the spiritual cognoscence of
psychological irrefragability, connected with concuitant ademption of
encolumnient spirituality, and etherealized contention of subsultory
concretion."

"That _is_ transcendentalism, indeed!" exclaimed the Squire. "It goes
beyond my understanding and comprehension."

"I feel myself