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Rh all the reverence which I have seen a lady pay to a jar of old china. With all this zeal his labours advanced slowly. He often opened a volume when half way up the library steps, fell upon some interesting passage, and, without shifting his inconvenient posture, continued immersed in the fascinating perusal until the servant pulled him by the skirts to assure him that dinner waited. He then repaired to the parlour, bolted his food down his capacious throat in squares of three inches, answered aye and no at random to whatever question was asked at him, and again hurried back to the library so soon as his napkin was removed.

And having thus left the principal characters of our tale in a situation, which, being sufficiently comfortable to themselves, is, of course, utterly uninteresting