"You ray-ther have me on the hip, S——th."
"Ay, just so; and if I should kick you there, you would not say the pain was a moral thing. All through the same. It's just where and when we don't know the medium we say things are moral and spiritual, and poetical and rational, and all the rest of the humbug."
"But though you say all highwaymen are cowards, you won't try that trick with your foot," said S——k, boiling up a little under the fire of the toddy.
"Don't intend; though, if you were to produce moral courage in me by pinching my nose, I think I could, after making up my mind and putting you upon your guard with a stick in your hand if you chose. Eh! my Peripatetic." And S——th was clearly getting drunk too.
"D——n the fellow, his metaphysics are making him [Transcriber's Note: missing part of this word] dent," cried W——pe.
"Why, you don't see where they hit," said S——th drawlingly. "Somewhere about the pineal; and therefore we say impudence is moral, sometimes immoral, as just now when you damned me. No more of your old junk, I say, sitting here in my cathedra, which by the way is spring-bottomed, which may account for my moral elasticity that a highwayman is a coward."
"Well," cried S——k, starting up. "I'll deposit a pound with W——pe, on a bet that you'll not take sixpence from the first bumpkin we meet on the road, by the old watchword, 'Stand and deliver;' and you'll have the gun to boot."
"Ay, that's a physical bribe," cried W——pe; and, after pausing a little, "The fellow flinches."
"And surely the reverse must hold," added S——k, "that, being a coward, he must be a highwayman."
"Why, you see, gents," said S——th coolly, "I don't mind a very great deal, you know, though I do take said sixpence from said bumpkin; but I won't do it, you know, on compulsion."