Mr. Solomon Pell, one of this learned body, was a fat, flabby, pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute, and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered. Being short-necked and asthmatic, however, he respired principally through this feature; so, perhaps, what it wanted in ornament, it made up in usefulness.

“I’m sure to bring him through it,” said Mr. Pell.

“Are you, though?” replied the person to whom the assurance was pledged.

“Certain sure,” replied Pell; “but if he’d gone to any irregular practitioner, mind you, I wouldn’t have answered for the consequences.”