D'ye catch me, my small Stagyrite, my petit
Peripatetic, my comical Academician, eh? Take your toddy, and let's have
a touch of moral drunkenness."
"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.
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