physiological
condition of the young person, John. I noticed, however, what I should
call a _palpebral spasm_, affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side,
which, if it were intended for the facial gesture called a wink, might
lead me to suspect a disposition to be satirical on his part.

----Resuming the conversation, I remarked,--I am, _ex officio_, as a
Professor, a conservative. For I don't know any fruit that clings to
its tree so faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, as a
Professor to the bough of which his chair is made. You can't shake him
off, and it is as much as you can do to pull him off. Hence, by a chain
of induction I need not unwind, he tends to conservatism generally.

But then, you know, if you are sailing the Atlantic, and all at once
find yourself in a current and the sea covered with weeds, and drop
your Fahrenheit over the side and find it eight or ten degrees higher
than in the ocean generally, there is no use in flying in the face of
facts and swearing there is no such thing as a Gulf-Stream, when you
are in it.

You can't keep gas in a bladder, and you can't keep knowledge tight in
a profession. Hydrogen will leak out, and air will leak in, through
India-rubber; and special knowledge will leak out, and general
knowledge will leak in, though a profession were covered with twenty
thicknesses of sheepskin diplomas. By Jove, Sir, till common sense is
well mixed up with medicine, and common manhood with theology, and
common honesty with law, _We the people_, Sir, some of us with
nutcrackers, and some of us with trip-hammers, and some of us with
pile-drivers, and some of us coming with a whish! like air-stones out
of a lunar volcano, will crash down on the lumps of nonsense in all of
them till we have made powder of them like Aaron's calf!

If to be a conservative is to let all the drains of thought choke up
and keep all the soul's windows down,--to shut out the sun from the
east and the wind from the west,--to let the rats run free in the
cellar, and the moths feed their fill in the chambers, and the spiders
weave their lace before the mirrors, till the soul's typhus is bred out
of our neglect, and we begin to snore in its coma or rave in its
delirium,--I, Sir, am a _bonnet-rouge_, a red-cap of the barricades, my
friends, rather than a conservative.

----Were you born in Boston, Sir?--said the little man,--looking eager
and excited.

I was not,--I replied.

It's a pity,--it'