"You will forgive me that I took the liberty of ordering breakfast as soon as I looked into this room.
Without asking to see your tongues, I prescribed dried herrings and home-brewed ale; for myself, a fried sole, a beef-steak reasonably under-done, a kidney-pie which the drawer commended on his own motion, with a smoked cheek of pork, perhaps--" "You wish us to sit still while you devour all this ?" "I am willing to give each side of the argument a fair chance." "But I find nothing to argue about!" exclaimed Captain Runacles, pushing his plate from him after a very faint attempt to eat.
"My mind being already made up--" "And mine," interrupted Captain Barker.
"If I suggest that both of you adopt the child," Dr.Beckerleg begun.
"Still he must be educated; and our notions of education differ.
Moreover, when we differ--as you may have observed--we do so with some thoroughness." "Let me propose, then, a system of alternation, by which you could adopt the boy for six months each, turn and turn about." "But if--as would undoubtedly happen--each adoptive parent spent his six months in undoing the other's work, it must follow that, at the end of any given period, the child's mind would be a mere _tabula rasa_.

Suppose, on the other hand, we failed to wipe out each other's teaching, the unfortunate youth would be launched upon life with half his guns pointed inboard and his needle jerking from one pole to the other.

Consider the name, Jeremiah Tristram!" "It is heterogeneous," admitted the Doctor.
"He would be called Tristram Jeremiah," Captain Barker put in.
"Well, but that is not less heterogeneous.

O wise Solomon!" cried the Doctor, with his mouth full of kidney-pie; "had I but the authority you enjoyed in a like dispute, I would resign to you all the credit of originality!" "As it is, however, you are wasting our time, and it becomes clear that we must fight, after all." "By no means; for I have this moment received an inspiration.
Drawer!" The drawer answered this summons almost before it was uttered, by appearing in the doorway with a dish of eggs and a fresh tankard.
"Set the dish down and attend," commanded Dr.Beckerleg.

"You have a dice-box and dice in the house ?" "No, sir.