Yet no possible connection exists between the two channels by which the thought or the fact arrived.

Let me give an infinitesimal illustration.
One of the Boys mentioned, the other evening, in the course of a very pleasant poem he read us, a little trick of the Commons-table boarders, which I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard of.

Young fellows being always hungry--Allow me to stop dead-short, in order to utter an aphorism which has been forming itself in one of the blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a crystal in the cavity of a geode.
Aphorism by the Professor.
In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals.

If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.

If old, it observes stated periods, and you might as well attempt to regulate the time of highwater to suit a fishing-party as to change these periods.