language that must
fall so sweetly on the ears of all parents of innocent porklings.
Like Othello, I have no wife, and really I can see little hope in
the future."

Thus moralized the "Individual," the morning after his experiment
with the women's gear, and his failure to learn, at a single
lesson, the whole art of catching a wife. Then he bethought him
that perhaps the art could not be learned without a master; and
then came the other thought that no one could tell so well how to
win a witch-wife as one who had himself been successful in that
risky experiment.

To find a man with a fortune-telling wife is no easy matter, for
most of the marriages contracted by these ladies are by no means
of a permanent character, and the male parties to the temporary
partnerships are always kept in the background. But if he could
discover up a wizard, a masculine master of the Black Art, there
were strong probabilities that such an individual could put him
in the way of winning a miracle-working spouse, at the very least
possible trouble and expense. He would seek that man as a
preliminary to winning that woman. The daily newspapers showed
him that in the person of a learned doctor, surnamed Wilson, he
would probably find the man he wanted. He searched out that
wonderful man, and the results of his visit are given in this
identical chapter.

Old dreamy Sol Gills, of coffee-colored memory, has been
admiringly recommended to the good opinion of the world by his
friend, Capt. Ed'ard Cuttle, mariner of England, as a man "chock
full of science." From the same eminent authority we also learn
that Jack Bunsby was an individual of learning so vast, and
experience so varied and comprehensive, that he never opened his
oracular mouth but out fell "solid chunks of wisdom." That the
person now dwells in our city who combines the scientific
attainments of Gills with the intuitive wisdom of Bunsby, we have
the solemn word of Johannes. The science is a trifle more dreamy
and misty even than of old, and the wisdom is solider and
chunkier, but both are as undeniable, as convincing, as
"stunning," as in the best days of the Little Wooden Midshipman.
The fortunate possessor of this inestimable wealth of knowledge
secludes himself from the curious public in the basement of the
house No. 172 Delancey street, like an underground hermit.
However, this unselfish and generous sage, not wishing to hide
entirely the light of his great learning from a ben