One of them
particularly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it
were, and as if it would be all the better for scraping. There
happened to be a microscopist in the village who had heard the old
pirate story, and he took it into his head to examine the crust on
this door. There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine
historical document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern,--a real cutis
humana, stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster, and the
legend was true.
My friend, the Professor, settled an important historical and
financial question once by the aid of an exceedingly minute
fragment of a similar document. Behind the pane of plate-glass
which bore his name and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to
the passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest favors
(or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had freely partaken of the
cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, following a moth-like
impulse very natural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at
the light and quenched the meek luminary,--breaking through the
plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don't want to go into
minutiae at table, you know, but a naked hand can no more go
through a pane of thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle,
to say the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a
sausage-machine without looking the worse for it.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152