orms. How does it act, Mr. Jones?" going on to the next
pupil--a man in a light cotton cravat and no shirt collar, who looks very
like a butler out of place.

"It tickles them to death, sir," answers Mr. Jones.

"You would say it acts mechanically," observes the grinder. "The fine
points stick into the worms and kill them. They say, 'Is this a dagger
which I see before me?' and then die. Recollect the dagger, Mr. Jones,
when you go up. Mr. Manhug, what do you consider the best sudorific, if
you wanted to throw a person into a perspiration?"

Mr. Manhug, who is the wag of the class, finishes, in rather an abrupt
manner, a song he was humming, _sotto voce_, having some allusion to a
peer who was known as Thomas, Lord Noddy, having passed a night at a house
of public entertainment in the Old Bailey previous to an execution. He
then takes a pinch of snuff, winks at the other pupils as much as to say,
"See me tackle him, now;" and replies, "The gallery door of Covent Garden
on Boxing-night."

"Now, come, be serious for once, Mr. Manhug," continues the teacher; "what
else is likely to answer the purpose?"

"I think a run up Holborn-hill, with two Ely-place knockers on your arm,
and three policemen on your heels, might have a good effect," answers Mr.
Manhug.

"Do you ever think you will pass the Hall, if you go on at this rate?"
observes the teacher, in a tone of mild reproach.

"Not a doubt of it, sir," returns the imperturbable Manhug. "I've passed
it twenty times within this last month, and did not find any very great
difficulty about it; neither do I expect to, unless they block up
Union-street and Water-lane."

The grinder gives Mr. Manhug up as a hopeless case, and goes on to the
next. "Mr. Rapp, they will be very likely to ask you the composition of
the _compound gamboge pill_: what is it made of?"

Mr. Rapp hasn't the least idea.

"Remember, then, it is composed of cambogia, aloes, ginger, and soap--C,
A, G, S,--_cags_. Recollect Cags, Mr. Rapp. What would you do if you were
sent for to a person poisoned by oxalic acid?"

"Give him some chalk," returns Mr. Rapp.

"But suppose you had not got any chalk, what would you substitute?"

"Oh, anything; pipeclay and soapsuds."

"Yes, that's all very right; but we will presume you could not get any
pipeclay and soapsuds; in fact, that there was nothing in the house. What
would you do then?"

Mr. Manhug cries out from the bottom of the table--"Let him die and