They did not diffuse a light of celestial joy over his countenance.  On the contrary, the Poor Relation’s remark turned him pale, as I have said; and when the terrible wrinkled and jaundiced looking-glass turned him green in addition, and he saw himself in it, it seemed to him as if it were all settled, and his book of life were to be shut not yet half-read, and go back to the dust of the under-ground archives.  He coughed a mild short cough, as if to point the direction in which his downward path was tending.  It was an honest little cough enough, so far as appearances went.  But coughs are ungrateful things.  You find one out in the cold, take it up and nurse it and make everything of it, dress it up warm, give it all sorts of balsams and other food it likes, and carry it round in your bosom as if it were a miniature lapdog.  And by-and-by its little bark grows sharp and savage, and—­confound the thing!—­you find it is a wolf’s whelp that you have got there, and he is gnawing in the breast where he has been nestling so long.—­The Poor Relation said that somebody’s surrup was good for folks that were gettin’ into a bad way.  The landlady had heard of desperate cases cured by cherry-pictorial.

Whiskey’s the fellah,—­said the young man John.—­Make it into punch, cold at dinner-time ‘n’ hot at bed-time.  I’ll come up ‘n’ show you how to mix it.  Haven’t any of you seen the wonderful fat man exhibitin’ down in Hanover Street?

Master Benjamin Franklin rushed into the dialogue with a breezy exclamation, that he had seen a great picter outside of the place where the fat man was exhibitin’.  Tried to get in at half-price, but the man at the door looked at his teeth and said he was more’n ten year old.

It isn’t two years,—­said the young man John,—­since that fat fellah was exhibitin’ here as the Livin’ Skeleton.  Whiskey—­that’s what did it,—­real Burbon’s the stuff.  Hot water, sugar, ‘n’ jest a little shavin’ of lemon-skin in it,—­skin, mind you, none o’ your juice; take it off thin,—­shape of one of them flat curls the factory-girls wear on the sides of their foreheads.

But I am a teetotaller,—­said the divinity-student, in a subdued tone;—­not noticing the enormous length of the bow-string the young fellow had just drawn.

He took up his hat and went out.

I think you have worried that young man more than you meant,—­I said.—­I don’t believe he will jump off of one of the bridges, for he has too much principle; but I mean to follow him and see where he goes, for he looks as if his mind were made up to something.

I followed him at a reasonable distance.  He walked doggedly along, looking neither to the right nor the left, turned into State Street, and made for a well-known Life-Insurance Office.  Luckily, the doctor was there and overhauled him on the spot.  There was nothing the matter with him, he said, and he could have his life insured as a sound one.  He came out in good spirits, and told me this soon after.