d to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach,
when it is required." To all this we say--Fudge! The sooner you get hold
of a leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with
a pot of porter--then leisurely on with a clean shirt--wash your face
and hands in gelid--none of your tepid water. There is no harm done if
you should shave--then keep walking up and down the parlour rather
impatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things act
agreeably to nature--stir up the waiter with some original jest by way
of stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare--and
never doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to the
extremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's name
fall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear till
there is no vestige left of the first--a second course being looked on
by the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in which
the poet has made a celebrated character consider it,--

"Nor fame I slight--nor for her favours call--
She comes unlook'd for--if she comes at all."

To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence,
the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returned
from India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why,
better--better, thank ye--I think I begin to feel some symptoms of the
return of a little English energy. Do you know that the day before
yesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually put
on one of my stockings myself?"

The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a man
can travel further for a week or a month than a horse." On reading this
sentence to Will Whipcord--"Yes, sir," replied that renowned Professor
of the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir--a man can beat a
horse!"

Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat a
horse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianism
on record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soon
as there is, we shall lay our money on the horse--only mind, the horse
carries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. We
know that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender,
arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty miles
a-day, for many days--and that for four days they have gone a hundred
miles a-day. That would have