Candy
in a rage.
The dispute between them began in Mr. Franklin being led--I forget
how--to acknowledge that he had latterly slept very badly at night. Mr.
Candy thereupon told him that his nerves were all out of order and that
he ought to go through a course of medicine immediately. Mr. Franklin
replied that a course of medicine, and a course of groping in the dark,
meant, in his estimation, one and the same thing. Mr. Candy, hitting
back smartly, said that Mr Franklin himself was, constitutionally
speaking, groping in the dark after sleep, and that nothing but medicine
could help him to find it. Mr. Franklin, keeping the ball up on his
side, said he had often heard of the blind leading the blind, and now,
for the first time, he knew what it meant. In this way, they kept it
going briskly, cut and thrust, till they both of them got hot--Mr.
Candy, in particular, so completely losing his self-control, in defence
of his profession, that my lady was obliged to interfere, and forbid
the dispute to go on. This necessary act of authority put the last
extinguisher on the spirits of the company. The talk spurted up again
here and there, for a minute or two at a time; but there was a miserable
lack of life and sparkle in it.
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