red, by two
fiery little gray eyes, his nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth
turned down pretty much like the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog.

I have heard it observed by a profound adept in human physiology that if
a woman waxes fat with the progress of years her tenure of life is
somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives
for ever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew
tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the
process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt
like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, inciting him to incessant broils
and bickerings. Ancient traditions speak much of his learning, and of the
gallant inroads he had made into the dead languages, in which he had made
captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, and brought off rich booty
in ancient saws and apophthegms, which he was wont to parade in his public
harangues, as a triumphant general of yore his _spolia opima_. Of
metaphysics he knew enough to confound all hearers and himself into the
bargain. In logic, he knew the whole family of syllogisms and dilemmas,
and was so proud of his skill that he never suffered even a self-evident
fact to pass unargued. It was observed, however, that he seldom got into
an argument without getting into a perplexity, and then into a passion
with his adversary for not being convinced gratis.

He had, moreover, skirmished smartly on the frontiers of several of the
sciences, was fond of experimental philosophy, and prided himself upon
inventions of all kinds. His abode, which he had fixed at a bowery, or
country seat, at a short distance from the city, just at what is now
called Dutch Street, soon abounded with proofs of his ingenuity; patent
smoke jacks that required a horse to work them; Dutch ovens that roasted
meat without fire; carts that went before the horses; weathercocks that
turned against the wind; and other wrong-headed contrivances that
astonished and confounded all beholders. The house, too, was beset with
paralytic cats and dogs, the subjects of his experimental philosophy; and
the yelling and yelping of the latter unhappy victims of science, while
aiding in the pursuit of knowledge, soon gained for the place the name of
"Dog's Misery," by which it continues to be known even at the present day.

It is in knowledge as in swimming, he who flounders and splashes on the
surface makes more n