“I am sorry,” said he, “we can’t trade.  Perhaps some other day you will be more reasonable.  Good bye!”

And Joseph departed leading away the donkeys!

Hans stood for some moments gazing after him with a complacent smile making his fat face ridiculous.  Then turning to his mill-stones, he shook his head with an air of intense self-satisfaction: 

“Py donner!  Dot Yo Garfey bees a geen, shmard yockey, but he gonnot spiel me svoppin’ yackasses!”

* * * * *

DR. DEADWOOD, I PRESUME.

My name is Shandy, and this is the record of my Sentimental Journey.  Mr. Ames Jordan Gannett, proprietor’s son of the “York——­,” with which paper I am connected by marriage, sent me a post-card in a sealed envelope, asking me to call at a well-known restaurant in Regent Street.  I was then at a well-known restaurant in Houndsditch.  I put on my worst and only hat, and went.  I found Mr. Gannett, at dinner, eating pease with his knife, in the manner of his countrymen.  He opened the conversation, characteristically, thus: 

“Where’s Dr. Deadwood?”

After several ineffectual guesses I had a happy thought.  I asked him: 

“Am I my brother’s bar-keeper?”

Mr. Gannett pondered deeply, with his forefinger alongside his nose.  Finally he replied: 

“I give it up.”

He continued to eat for some moments in profound silence, as that of a man very much in earnest.  Suddenly he resumed: 

“Here is a blank cheque, signed.  I will send you all my father’s personal property to-morrow.  Take this and find Dr. Deadwood.  Find him actually if you can, but find him.  Away!”

I did as requested; that is, I took the cheque.  Having supplied myself with such luxuries as were absolutely necessary, I retired to my lodgings.  Upon my table in the centre of the room were spread some clean white sheets of foolscap, and sat a bottle of black ink.  It was a good omen:  the virgin paper was typical of the unexplored interior of Africa; the sable ink represented the night of barbarism, or the hue of barbarians, indifferently.

Now began the most arduous undertaking mentioned in the “York——­,” I mean in history.  Lighting my pipe, and fixing my eye upon the ink and paper, I put my hands behind my back and took my departure from the hearthrug toward the Interior.  Language fails me; I throw myself upon the reader’s imagination.  Before I had taken two steps, my vision alighted upon the circular of a quack physician, which I had brought home the day before around a bottle of hair-wash.  I now saw the words, “Twenty-one fevers!” This prostrated me for I know not how long.  Recovering, I took a step forward, when my eyes fastened themselves upon my pen-wiper, worked into the similitude of a tiger.  This compelled me to retreat to the hearthrug for reinforcements.  The red-and-white dog displayed upon that article turned a deaf ear to my entreaties; nothing would move him.