Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/716

284 be what is popularly called a tapper; one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don't believe hi. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.

"You will excuse me," said the gentleman, contemptuously, "if I am too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it. I have passed the night—as indeed I pass the whole of my time now—in spiritual intercourse."

"Oh I " said I, something snappishly.

"The conferences of the night began," continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, " with this message : 'Evil communications corrupt good manners."

"Sounds, said I; "but absolutely new?"

"New from spirits," returned the gentleman.

I could only repeat my rather snappish "Oh!" and ask if I might be favored with the last communication?"

"A bird in the hand,'" said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, "'is worth two in the bush.'"

"Truly I am of the same opinion," said I; "but shouldn't it be bush?"

"It came to me bosh," returned the gentleman.

The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. "My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling." Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. "I am glad to see you amico. Com Sta? Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Addio!" In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, "Bubler," for which offence against orthography and good maimers he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of willful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew