Part 9 (2/2)

”I have set my mind on Mr Escot,” said the squire.

”I am much obliged to you,” said Mr Cranium, ”for dethroning me from my paternal authority.”

”Who fished you out of the water?” said Squire Headlong.

”What is that to the purpose?” said Mr Cranium. ”The whole process of the action was mechanical and necessary. The application of the poker necessitated the ignition of the powder: the ignition necessitated the explosion: the explosion necessitated my sudden fright, which necessitated my sudden jump, which, from a necessity equally powerful, was in a curvilinear ascent: the descent, being in a corresponding curve, and commencing at a point perpendicular to the extreme line of the edge of the tower, I was, by the necessity of gravitation, attracted, first, through the ivy, and secondly through the hazel, and thirdly through the ash, into the water beneath. The motive or impulse thus adhibited in the person of a drowning man, was as powerful on his material compages as the force of gravitation on mine; and he could no more help jumping into the water than I could help falling into it.”

”All perfectly true,” said Squire Headlong; ”and, on the same principle, you make no distinction between the man who knocks you down and him who picks you up.”

”I make this distinction,” said Mr Cranium, ”that I avoid the former as a machine containing a peculiar _cataballitive_ quality, which I have found to be not consentaneous to my mode of pleasurable existence; but I attach no moral merit or demerit to either of them, as these terms are usually employed, seeing that they are equally creatures of necessity, and must act as they do from the nature of their organisation. I no more blame or praise a man for what is called vice or virtue, than I tax a tuft of hemlock with malevolence, or discover great philanthropy in a field of potatoes, seeing that the men and the plants are equally incapacitated, by their original internal organisation, and the combinations and modifications of external circ.u.mstances, from being any thing but what they are. _Quod victus fateare necesse est_.”

”Yet you destroy the hemlock,” said Squire Headlong, ”and cultivate the potato; that is my way, at least.”

”I do,” said Mr Cranium; ”because I know that the farinaceous qualities of the potato will tend to preserve the great requisites of unity and coalescence in the various const.i.tuent portions of my animal republic; and that the hemlock, if gathered by mistake for parsley, chopped up small with b.u.t.ter, and eaten with a boiled chicken, would necessitate a great derangement, and perhaps a total decomposition, of my corporeal mechanism.”

”Very well,” said the squire; ”then you are necessitated to like Mr Escot better than Mr Panscope?”

”That is a _non sequitur_,” said Mr Cranium.

”Then this is a _sequitur_,” said the squire: ”your daughter and Mr Escot are necessitated to love one another; and, unless you feel necessitated to adhibit your consent, they will feel necessitated to dispense with it; since it does appear to moral and political economists to be essentially inherent in the eternal fitness of things.”

Mr Cranium fell into a profound reverie: emerging from which, he said, looking Squire Headlong full in the face, ”Do you think Mr Escot would give me that skull?”

”Skull!” said Squire Headlong.

”Yes,” said Mr Cranium, ”the skull of Cadwallader.”

”To be sure he will,” said the squire.

”Ascertain the point,” said Mr Cranium.

”How can you doubt it?” said the squire.

”I simply know,” said Mr Cranium, ”that if it were once in my possession, I would not part with it for any acquisition on earth, much less for a wife. I have had one: and, as marriage has been compared to a pill, I can very safely a.s.sert that _one is a dose_; and my reason for thinking that he will not part with it is, that its extraordinary magnitude tends to support his system, as much as its very marked protuberances tend to support mine; and you know his own system is of all things the dearest to every man of liberal thinking and a philosophical tendency.”

The Squire flew over to Mr Escot. ”I told you,” said he, ”I would settle him: but there is a very hard condition attached to his compliance.”

”I submit to it,” said Mr Escot, ”be it what it may.”

”Nothing less,” said Squire Headlong, ”than the absolute and unconditional surrender of the skull of Cadwallader.”

”I resign it,” said Mr Escot.

”The skull is yours,” said the squire, skipping over to Mr Cranium.

”I am perfectly satisfied,” said Mr Cranium.

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