The right reverend father in God, Cocker, has gnawed away the Old Testament: the Oxford doctors are nibbling away the New: nothing escapes but the apocrypha: yet these same skeptics believe the impudent lies, and monstrous arithmetic of geology, which babbles about a million years, a period actually beyond the comprehension of the human intellect; and takes up a jaw-bone, that some sly navvy has transplanted over-night from the churchyard into Lord knows what stratum, fees the navvy, gloats over the bone, and knocks the Bible down with it.

No, Mr.
Coventry, your story is a good one, and well told; don't let us defile it with the comments of a skeptical credulous pedant.

Fill your glass, sir.

Here's to old religion, old stories, old songs, old houses, old wine, old friends, or" (recovering himself with admirable grace) "to new friends that are to be old ones ere we die.

Come, let the stronger vessel drink, and the weaker vessel sip, and all say together, after me-- "Well may we all be, Ill may we never see, That make good company, Beneath the roof of Raby." When this rude rhyme had been repeated in chorus, there was a little silence, and the conversation took a somewhat deeper tone.