Note 2 — Chapter V · BOANERGES AND THE YOUNG MATHEMATICIAN.

Incredible as it may seem, we pledge our personal veracity that this bald and silly narration, which appears to be merely a foolish burlesque, is a bona fide, et literatim, et punctuatim, transcript, as close as it is possible for memory to furnish, of stories that were, at least as often as five days out of the seven, related at the dinner-table at which Boanerges presided, to long double lines of gaping women, who, obedient to the irresistible spell he bore, had followed up this maudlin Proteus of Professors, as disciples of water-cure, through his latest metamorphoses, into physician of such an establishment in Boston. It was thus he exhorted them to faith, and encouraged his backsliders.