CHAPTER I.
Coming events cast their shadows before.
"A Black Pudding?" quoth my Grandfather, "what an idea!" "Mr Love," said my Grandmother, (she always called him Mr Love, for she was a very polite and a very learned woman,) a black pudding is no idea; an idea is not a substance, now a black pudding is a palpable substance; it is a concretion of the blood and suet of an animal of the ruminant order of the class mammalia, encased in a cutaneous gut of the same animal, vulgarly called Tripe." "And what do I care about all that?" said my grandfather, who detested a scientific discussion, especially with my grandmother, because he was ignorant of scientific matters, and there she liked to shew off her superiority. After a short pause, "Mr Love," said my grandmother, "I must taste black pudding, and that's the short and the long of it, and you know, you are bound, as my husband, to satisfy all my reasonable desires." "Surely, surely," said my grandfather, "if you would confine yourself to what is reasonable—but is it reasonable to ask me to rise from a warm bed at this time in the morn-
