pretty hopefully, upon the Quantification of the
Predicate; but he had to give that up too, when he found out how small
and how dry a meat rattled within the big, noisy nut-shell. He read
Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Dens, and a cartload more of old
casuists, Romanist and Protestant.

He exhausted the learning of the Development Theory. He studied and
experimented up to the existing limits of knowledge on the question of
the Origin of Life, and then poked out alone, as much farther as he
could, into the ineffable black darkness that is close at the end of
our noses on that, as well as most other questions. He hammered his
way through the whole controversy on the Freedom of the Will. He
mastered the whole works of Mrs. Henry C. Carey on one side, and of
two hundred and fifty English capitalists and American college
professors on the other, on the question of Protection or Free Trade.
He made, with vast pains, an extensive collection of the questions
proposed at debating societies and college-students' societies with
long Greek names. The last effort was a failure. Dr. Hicok had got the
idea, that, from the spontaneous activity of so many free young
geniuses, many wondrous and suggestive thoughts would be born. Having,
however, tabulated his collection, he found, that, among all these
innumerable gymnasia of intellect, there were only seventeen questions
debated! The doctor read me a curious little memorandum of his
conclusions on this unexpected fact, which will perhaps be printed
some day.

He investigated many other things too; for a sharp-witted little
Presbyterian Scotch doctor, working to cheat the Devil out of his
soul, can accomplish an amazing deal in twenty years. He even went so
far as to take into consideration mere humbugs; for, if he could cheat
the enemy with a humbug, why not? The only pain in that case, would be
the mortification of having stooped to an inadequate adversary--a
foeman unworthy of his steel. So he weighed such queries as the old
scholastic _brocard, An chimoera bombinans in vacuo devorat secundas
intentiones?_ and that beautiful moot point wherewith Sir Thomas More
silenced the challenging schoolmen of Bruges, _An averia carrucae
capta in vetito nomio sint irreplegibilia?_

He glanced a little at the subject of conundrums; and among the chips
from his workshop is a really clever theory of conundrums. He has a
classification and discussion of them, all his own, and quite
ingenious and