"Brother, he was a Dissenter; and, thank Heaven! I am a Church-and-
State man to the backbone!"
"Robert Hall was a brave man and a true soldier under the Great
Commander," said my father, artfully.
The Captain mechanically carried his forefinger to his forehead in military fashion, and saluted the book respectfully.
"I have another copy for you, Pisistratus,—that is mine which I have lent Roland. This, which I bought for you to-day, you will keep."
"Thank you, sir," said I listlessly, not seeing what great good the "Life of Robert Hall" could do me, or why the same medicine should suit the old weather-beaten uncle and the nephew yet in his teens.
"I have said nothing," resumed my father, slightly bowing his broad temples, "of the Book of books, for that is the lignum vitm, the cardinal medicine for all. These are but the subsidiaries; for as you may remember, my dear Kitty, that I have said before,—we can never keep the system quite right unless we place just in the centre of the great ganglionic system, whence the nerves carry its influence gently and smoothly through the whole frame, The Saffron Bag!"
(1) Cicero's joke on a senator who was the son of a tailor: "Thou hast touched the thing sharply" (or with a needle, acu).
(2) Rubruquis, sect. xii.
CHAPTER VI.
After breakfast the next morning I took my hat to go out. when my father, looking at me, and seeing by my countenance that I had not slept, said gently,—