"In conversation, you have as usual brought me to a point! I mean—if I mean anything,—the other two; but I mean nothing, unless you like."
"I do like. Just now, then, I am in the vacation before the last year of my Seminary life,—for the rest, I am on my way to Germany."
"Finish your course there, eh?" said the doctor. "Why man, I thought you had found the 'four azure chains' long ago."
"No, not to finish my course,—if I am kept in Germany more than a few weeks, it will not be by 'azure' chains," said Mr. Linden.
"That it will not!" said one of the young men coming up, fresh from the tea-table and his cigar. "Azure chains?—pooh!—Linden breaks them as easy as Samson did the green withs. How biblical it makes one to be in company with such a theologian! But I shouldn't wonder if he was going to Europe to join some order of friars—he'll find nothing monastic enough for him in America."
"Mistaken your man, Motley!" said the doctor; who for reasons of his own did not choose to quit the conversation. "The worst I have to say of him is, that if he spends an other year in Germany his hearers will never be able to understand him!"
"Mistaken him!" said Mr. Motley—"at this time of day,—that'll do!
Where did you get acquainted with him, pray?"
"Once when I had the management of him," said the doctor coolly. "There is no way of becoming acquainted with a man, like that."
"Once when you thought you had," said Mr. Motley. "Well, where was it?—in a dark passage when you got to the door first?"
"Whenever I have had the misfortune to be in a dark passage with him, he has shewed me the door," said the doctor gravely but gracefully, in his old fashion admirably maintained.