Now this same pithy oration had been indited, like sundry others, by my learned magister, Erasmus Holiday, so I had heard it often enough to remember every line.

As soon as I heard him blundering and floundering like a fish upon dry land, through the first verse, and perceived him at a stand, I knew where the shoe pinched, and helped him to the next word, when he caught me up in an ecstasy, even as you saw but now.

I promised, as the price of your admission, to hide me under his bearish gaberdine, and prompt him in the hour of need.

I have just now been getting some food in the Castle, and am about to return to him." "That's right--that's right, my dear Dickie," replied Wayland; "haste thee, for Heaven's sake! else the poor giant will be utterly disconsolate for want of his dwarfish auxiliary.

Away with thee, Dickie!" "Ay, ay!" answered the boy--"away with Dickie, when we have got what good of him we can.