ung, and perhaps not. Or you, Mr. Clavering? It is a subject
worthy of your thoughts. To digest! Do you know what it means? It is to
have the sun always shining, and the shade always ready for you. It is
to be met with smiles, and to be greeted with kisses. It is to hear
sweet sounds, to sleep with sweet dreams, to be touched ever by gentle,
soft, cool hands. It is to be in paradise. Adam and Eve were in
paradise. Why? Their digestion was good. And then they took liberties,
eat bad fruit--things they could not digest. They what we call, ruined
their constitutions, destroyed their gastric juices, and then they were
expelled from paradise by an angel with a flaming sword. The angel with
the flaming sword, which turned two ways, was indigestion! There came a
great indigestion upon the earth because the cooks were bad, and they
called it a deluge. Ah, I thank God there is to be no more deluges. All
the evils come from this. Macbeth could not sleep. It was the supper,
not the murder. His wife talked and walked. It was the supper again.
Milton had a bad digestion because he is always so cross; and your
Carlyle must have the worst digestion in the world, because he never
says any good of anything. Ah, to digest is to be happy! Believe me,
my friends, there is no other way not to be turned out of paradise by
a fiery, two-handed turning sword."

"It is true," said Schmoff; "yes, it is true."

"I believe you," said Doodles. "And how well the count describes it,
don't he, Mr. Clavering? I never looked at it in that light; but, after
all, digestion is everything. What is a horse worth, if he won't feed?"

"I never thought much about it," said Harry.

"That is very good," said the great preacher. "Not to think about it
ever is the best thing in the world. You will be made to think about it
if there be necessity. A friend of mine told, me he did not know whether
he had a digestion. My friend, I said, you are like the husbandmen; you
do not know your own blessings. A bit more steak, Mr. Clavering; see, it
has come up hot, just to prove that you have the blessing."

There was a pause in the conversation for a minute or two, during which
Schmoff and Doodles were very busy giving the required proof; and the
count was leaning back in his chair with a smile of conscious wisdom on
his face, looking as though he were in deep consideration of the subject
on which he had just spoken with so much eloquence. Harry did not
interrupt the silen