"Any oil in it?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Take it away directly, then. So long as
sea-sickness continues to torture humanity, I
cannot reconcile it to my conscience uselessly
to consume even the small quantity of oil
which adheres to the leaf of a lettuce."

General astonishment—general anxiety to
know what I mean. Down comes another
Thing, directly, shaken out of my bottomless
bag of ready-made information.

"What produces sea-sickness?" I ask,
leaning back in my chair, and putting one
hand impressively into my waistcoat. "The
rolling of the sea, and the consequent pitching
and tossing of the vessel that floats on it.
Still the sea, and you still the vessel. Still
the vessel, and you still the human stomach.
But, who is to still the sea? Pooh! pooh! give
me a boat, a vial of oil, and a Professor to
pour it out—and the thing is done. You
doubt that, do you? Ah, dear! dear! this
is what comes of Things not being generally
known. It is a fact, with which few persons,
unhappily, are familiar, that Professor Horsford
(you see I don't mind mentioning
names)—that Professor Horsford, by emptying
a vial of oil upon the sea in a stiff breeze,
stilled the surface. After that, don't talk to
me about sea-sickness, and don't expect a
man who loves his species, to eat salad, and
so waste oil which might be used in
mitigating human suffering. Give me a row of
boats from Dover to Calais, and a row of
Professors in them (well wrapped up, for such
men are precious), each armed with his vial
of oil. Professor Number One empties his
bottle, the moment the steamer leaves the
harbour; Professor Number Two, at a proper
interval, follows his example—and so on, all
through the row, over to Calais. What is the
inevitable consequence? A stiff breeze becomes
known, to all future ages, only as a Horsford
calm—the privileges of continental travel
are thrown open to the most uproarious
stomach in existence—and the children of the
next generation, when they "see the verb To
Retch in the English Dictionary, look up
innocently into our faces, and say, with a smile,
'Papa, what does it mean?'"

Will that do, for dinner? If it will, I am
ready to proceed up stairs, to join the soirée,
and to go on inexhaustibly scattering my
Things about me, in that new sphere of
action. Youth of the fair sex, which shuns
the sober dinner-table, floats in with the
evening gathering (I despise the man who
can speak of a young lady and not be poetical)
like the beams of the young moon; like
the rays of the rising sun (I throw this sort
of thing off very easily); like the flood of
gorgeous light from a chemist's window when
the gas is lit; like the sparkles from a
diamond ring; like the welcome glow from a
lighthouse that brightens the bosom of the
deep; like—well, well, the reader may be
out of breath by this time, though I am not:
let us therefore wind our way back through
the labyrinth of comparisons to our original
starting-point of female youth and beauty.

It (female youth and beauty) comes to the
soirée with its mama and its nosegay, and its
smile and its precious dress, and its plump
shoulders, and its captivating freshness in the
matter of Things Not Generally Known. It
sits down and looks innocently interested
about nothing in particular. It receives
compliments from male youth and beauty; and
blushes and beams, and flirts its nosegay, and
rustles its precious dress, responsive. But
what compliments! Not the smallest atom of
useful information wrapped up in any one of
them. Not so much as the shadow of rivalry
for me to dread, when I enter the field with
my soft speech and my Thing Not Generally
Known—my oil and vinegar; my nonsense
and my knowledge—so mixed up together
that no human art can ever separate them
again. I bide my time till the eye of
female youth and beauty catches mine, and
beams indulgent recognition then—turn to
my brother and whisper, interrogatively,
"Compliment to a pretty girl?" he answers,
directly," Page Forty One: Phenomena of
Vision,"—and I slide off forthwith to the
corner where the charming creature sits
twiddling her nosegay and bashfully expecting
me.

"I saw you looking sympathetically at
your sister-flowers," I begin, in that soft,
murmuring, mysterious tone of voice, which
we ladies' men so perpetually and so
successfully use in all our communications with
the fair sex;" and I longed to be one of
them,—this scarlet geranium, for instance.
Do you know why I envy that one little
flower with all my heart?"

"Because I like to look at it, I suppose,
you selfish man!" says the young lady,
little suspecting that, under cover of this
apparent nonsense, there lies artfully in wait
for her a Thing Not Generally Known.

"No," I answer, "not because you look
at it,—though that is much,—but because
it has the happy, the priceless privilege of
making your eyes undulate four hundred
and eighty-two millions of times in a second.
Todd—do you know him?—states it as a
scientific fact that you must undulate all
those millions of times—in one second (pray:
don't forget that) before you can perceive
a scarlet tint. Why, ah why, am I not of a
scarlet tint?—or, better still, of a violet
tint? For, believe me, I am not exaggerating
when I tell you (on the authority of
Todd, whose Cyclopædia may be procured
at any of the libraries) that those laughing
eyes must undergo seven hundred and seven
millions of millions of undulatory movements,
if they look at a violet tint. Out of all
those vibrations might there not be one little
one adventurous enough to stray from the eye
to the heart? May I sacrifice all propriety
by wearing a violet waistcoat, the next time