Certain perplexing questions, which had fifty times been answered and dismissed, were ever returning to worry the general consciousness of the company:—­Is it not best to scourge one’s self along with a popular enthusiasm, when, by many excellent methods, it would sweep society to a definite good?  Are not the ardors of the imagination better working-powers than the cold judgments of the reason?  Should we ever be carping at controlling principles, when much of their present manifestation seems full of active worthiness?  Above all, have we not listened to contemptible fallacies of self-indulgence and indolence, and then cheated ourselves into believing them the sober testimonies of conscience?

That some such melancholic refinements were restless in the brains of many I have no doubt.  Probably only Mrs. Widesworth and the undergraduates were wholly undisturbed by them.  Yet, in spite of this secret uneasiness, there was common to the company a stiff recognition of its own virtue, which seemed to impart a certain queer rigidity to the bodily presence of the guests.  Dr. Dastick, for the first and only time in my remembrance, appeared with his trousers bound with straps to the bottoms of his boots.  Colonel Prowley had thrust his neck into a stock of extraordinary stiffness, which seemed to proceed from some antique coat-of-mail worn beneath the waistcoat.  The collar and cuffs of Miss Prowley were wonderful in their dimensions, and fairly creaked with the starch.  The clergyman, indeed, wore his dress and manners in relaxed and even slouchy fashion; but this seemed not due to lightness of heart, but only to weariness of mind.  I knew that something had caused him to feel acutely the limitations of his office.  One might attribute such feelings to the bass-viol player in an orchestra, who, in whatever whirl of harmony, is permitted to scrape out only a few gruff notes.  But there was dear Mrs. Widesworth, so deliciously drugged by the anodynes of Authority that she could shake the chains of custom till they jingled like sleigh-bells.

“Come, come,” said this good lady; “why, you all seem to be following the advice of my grandfather Twynintuft,—­which was, to let the mind muddle after dinner.  He thought it strengthened the voice,—­gave it timber, as he called it.  But, ah, dear! in these days so little attention is paid to elocution that it’s of no consequence whatever!”

“I have endeavored, Madam,” said Professor Owlsdarck, with great precision of utterance, “I have endeavored to impress upon my scholars that Socratic wisdom which condemned books as silent:  a testimony, as I take it, of great importance to those who would perfect the instrument of oral instruction.”

“There is no great elocutionist at the present day,” said Mrs. Widesworth with pious regret.

“And little could we profit by him, if there were,” rejoined the Principal of the Wrexford Academy.  “For, in the present excited condition of our river-towns, men do not strive to copy the moderate virtues of the Ancients, but only to exaggerate their heathenish extispicy.”