Tom looked at Ida, and Ida blushed, and Tom was satisfied and willing to venture on matrimony without an examination of that beautiful head covered with long and luxuriant tresses.
"What is Mr. Pate going to do?" asked Rosabel, as Pate took a seat on the platform.
"He has presented himself for examination," said Toney.
The phrenologist carefully manipulated the big bald head before him, and then exclaimed, with enthusiasm,—
"This gentleman has a most magnificent cranium. His perceptive faculties are large, and so are the organs of firmness, benevolence, and conscientiousness; comparison is very large, and causality is immense. I have never met with a finer development of the reasoning faculties except on the skull of the distinguished lawyer of Timbuctoo, which now lies before me on the table. This gentleman would excel in intellectual pursuits, and might make a great and distinguished judge, the equal of Mansfield or Marshall."
Pate retired from the platform a proud and happy man, and from that day became an enthusiastic student of the science of phrenology.
Perch seated himself in the chair which he had vacated.
"This gentleman," said Boneskull, "is better fitted for domestic life. He would be a devoted lover, and a disappointment in love might drive him to despair, and even suicide."
Perch hastily retired, for he recollected the bottle of brandy which he had swallowed in a fit of desperation after his unfortunate interview with the beautiful Imogen in Colonel Hazlewood's garden. Love and Dove now seated themselves in two chairs, and were examined by Boneskull, who said,—
"The organs of these gentlemen correspond in every particular. Each can sing sweetly, and either could easily win a woman's heart."