wrong principle, but that I alone knew how it ought to be poked.  My fingers itched, my whole body tingled with excitement.  At last Dr. FUSSELL ceased.  In a moment I was out of my seat and making a bee-line for the poker.  I just managed to beat the other two by a short head, seized the poker, and relieved my soul by stirring the fire on strictly scientific principles.  The others watched me hungrily.  When I had finished, each of them took a short turn with the poker, and then we all returned, more or less appeased, to our seats.

But we had not done with the ineffable FUSSELL.  By this time he was on the top of a step-ladder.  Slowly he selected six tomes, and began his perilous descent.  Our eyes were riveted upon him.  Crash, bang!  His arms were empty, and the unconscionable books fluttered and clattered to the floor.  Slowly and ruefully did FUSSELL descend into the cloud of dust and gather his bruised treasures from the carpet.  At last he heaped them on his table, and began to write.  We hoped for peace, but it was not to be.  A sudden thought struck him.  He would sew his scattered leaves of MS. together.  With dreadful deliberation he took needle and cotton from a little pocket housewife that he carried with him; and then began one of the most maddening performances I have ever watched.  Carefully he held the needle to the light, carefully he wetted and trimmed his cotton to a point.  And for ten stricken minutes we saw him miss the eye of the needle, sometimes by an inch, sometimes by a hair’s breadth.  It was a thrilling contest between obstinacy and evasiveness.  I was fascinated by it.  Every time, as the cotton neared the eye, my heart slowly ascended into my mouth, only to drop with a fatal swiftness into my boots as the triumphant needle scored another victory.  I began to imitate FUSSELL’s every movement.  I threaded invisible needles by the gross with imperceptible cotton.  I felt in my own breast all the ardour of the chase, all the bitter sorrow of repeated failures.  My two companions in misfortune were similarly affected, and there we sat, three sane and ordinary men, feverishly going through all these itching movements with FUSSELL as our detested, but unconscious fugleman.  The strain became too great.  I sprang from my chair, “Sir,” I said to the astonished FUSSELL, “permit me; I learnt the art of threading needles as a boy from an East End seamstress,” and before he had time to protest, I had seized the offending instruments, and by a stroke of inspiration had passed the cotton through.  Then without waiting to hear what FUSSELL might have to say, I fled from the room.  And here consequently I sit with my nerves shattered, and an untasted crumpet cooling on the tea-tray.