"Would Oi advoise ye to git marrud?" roared the Professor, possibly for the benefit of some new patients who were just being let in—he had stopped to listen to the door-bell a few moments previously. "Av coorse Oi would. There are physiol'gical reasons for it. Ye know what they say, don't ye?"
Here the Professor smiled and winked in a distinctly doggish manner. We felt that he was about to say something decidedly improper in connection with those same "physiol'gical" reasons. We blushed violently.
"Ye know, they say that single min go insane much oftener than marrud min. And it is explained on physiol'gical grounds. Take the Turks, fer instance. Look at the foine, upstandin', healthy min they are, with their harems and their Circassian slaves and all the rist of it. And Oi remimber when Oi was in the heart of Africa forty years ago...."
"What part of Africa were you in?" we asked, expecting to be told that he had acted as a guide for David Livingstone.
"Oi was at Cape Town—no, no, Oi was two thousand moiles north of Cape Town, up in a country they call Nay-tawl. The whole district was filled with magnificent fellas, great, big, deep-chested, two-fisted, up-standin' six-footers, ivry wan of thim with their six or sivin woives—and divil a bit of immorality in the whole country!"
Under the circumstances we could easily believe in the high moral status of the inhabitants of Natal. But we didn't see how it helped our own particular case. Whatever may be our personal opinions on the subject of polygamy, police magistrates have been known to cherish prejudices against people who carry "physiol'gy" as far as that.
Then the Professor went back to his chart. He dragged one out of a drawer and insisted that we should gaze upon the picture of a hairless gentleman with his head neatly divided into choice building lots, each containing a little sketch suggestive of the characteristic represented by a bump at that point. For instance, in the section allotted to "amativeness"—lovely word!—there was a picture of a young man and young woman kissing. In the section labelled "combativeness" two prize-fighters faced one another; while in the "love of home" department a gentleman sat under a large stump and gazed wistfully at a barn in the distance.
We still refused to be won over, even by these allurements of graphic art. Thereupon the Professor read out several extracts of a nature to help us in the development of hopefulness and our chest.
"Ye must practice self-confidence and hopefulness," said he. "That's the only way ye can develop yer faculty of hope. And the chart shows ye how ye can do it."
Presumably the chart contained directions for fifteen-minute hoping exercises to be gone through morning and night. In the course of time, no doubt, we would develop into one of the best little hopers in town. But for the time being we were still somewhat dejected. We couldn't get our mind off those "foine, up-standin' min in Nay-tawl."