Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/62

 entirely free from the earthly trammels that cumber liberal discussion in general society, and he is to be called morbid, forsooth! It was only one of your ghastly jests, was it? Enough! I am satisfied. There can be no bone of contention—I mean no subject of dispute—between you and me—we have not the ghost of a reason—I mean the shadow of a cause—for disagreement. I confess my weakness: I own to a fatal tendency to digression. One thought leads to another, and they follow in a string, like wild geese, or heirs of entail, velut unda supervenit undam! By the way, this very subject, the association of ideas, opens up a boundless field for speculation. But I refrain—I return to my Gourd—I am back in Nineveh with the prophet once more. Nineveh, in its imperial splendour, gorgeous in Eastern colouring, sublime with Eastern magnificence, glittering with Eastern