t that's the
principle, you understand--and then you take up your double thong,
so--pshaw, I did it very well just now--to put it into the wheeler,
so--ah, I missed it then, but that's the way to do it."

He put me considerably in mind of a certain professor of chemistry,
whose lectures on light and heat I once was rash enough to attend, who,
after a long dry disquisition which had nearly put us all to sleep, used
to arouse our attention to the "beautiful effects" produced by certain
combinations, which he would proceed to illustrate, as he said, by a
"little experiment." But, somehow or other, these little experiments
always, or nearly always, failed: and after the room had been darkened,
perhaps, for five minutes or so, in order to give the exhibition full
effect, the result would be, a _fizz_ or two, a faint blue light, and a
stink, varying according to circumstances, but always abominable. "It's
very odd, John," the discomfited operator used to exclaim to his
assistant; "very odd; and we succeeded so well this morning, too: it's
most unaccountable: I'm really very sorry, gentlemen, but I can assure
you, this very same experiment we tried to-day with the most beautiful
result; didn't we, John?" "We did, sir," was John's invariably dutiful
reply: and so the audience took John's word for it, and the experiment
was considered to have been, virtually, successful.

So we rattled on to the ground: Leicester occasionally putting the reins
into his companion's hand, teaching him to perform some impossible
movement with his third finger, and directing his attention to
non-existent flies, which he professed to remove from the leader, out of
sheer compassion, with the point of the whip.

"You are sure you wouldn't like to take the reins now? Well, you'll
drive home then, of course? Hawthorne, will you try your hand now?
Hurst's going to take up the tooling when we come back."

"No, thank you," said I; "I won't interfere with either of your
performances."--"And if Hurst does drive home," was my mental
determination, expressed to Leicester as far as a nod can do it, "I'll
walk."

There was no difficulty in finding out the localities: the field in
which the winning-flag was fixed was not far from the turnpike road, and
conspicuous enough by the crowd already collected. Of course, pretty
nearly all the sporting characters among the gownsmen were there, the
distance from the University being so trifling. Mounted on that seedy