once looking behind him; nor has he been since heard of, though his friend, Jack Linton, has travelled over half the globe in search of him.

THE INQUISITIVE GENTLEMAN

MR. JEDEDIAH EVERSEARCH lost his left eye in gratifying an excessive and unwearied thirst for information. It was sacrificed upon the shrine of knowledge. Other acts of self-devotion are upon record, of other great men, who have immolated themselves to further the advance of science. Guyon of Marseilles dissected and examined the body of a person who had died of the plague, for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the disease; he purchased success with his life. A late French philosopher stifled himself with the fumes of charcoal, to learn the

effect upon the human system; and the eye of Mr. Jedediah Eversearch was pricked out by a needle, as it was applied to the key-hole of a buttery door, to discover the number of pies that had been baked for the New Year's Saturnalia. The house-maid heard his breathings at the aperture, and imagined he was listening to her culinary consultations with a fellow-servant. She stabbed at the ear, but extinguished the left eye of Jedediah for ever.

His parents, after mourning a due season for the loss of the darkened optic, consoled themselves with hoping that this accident would put a period to the troublesome inquisitiveness of their son. Futile anticipation! Jedediah was no sooner able to resume his peripatetic occupations, than he adorned his nasal protuberance with a pair of green spectacles, to conceal the deformity in his visage, and returned to the charge with redoubled fury. It seemed as if his