Don't crow, another
time, before you're out of the woods! Does your mother know you're
out? Oh, no, no!- so go home at once, now, John, to your odious old
woods of Concord! Go home to your woods, old owl- go! You won't! Oh,
poh, poh, don't do so! You've got to go, you know! So go at once,
and don't go slow, for nobody owns you here, you know! Oh! John, John,
if you don't go you're no homo- no! You're only a fowl, an owl, a cow,
a sow,- a doll, a poll; a poor, old, good-for-nothing-to-nobody,
log, dog, hog, or frog, come out of a Concord bog. Cool, now- cool! Do
be cool, you fool! None of your crowing, old cock! Don't frown so-
don't! Don't hollo, nor howl nor growl, nor bow-wow-wow! Good Lord,
John, how you do look! Told you so, you know- but stop rolling your
goose of an old poll about so, and go and drown your sorrows in a
bowl!'
Exhausted, very naturally, by so stupendous an effort, the great
Touch-and-go could attend to nothing farther that night. Firmly,
composedly, yet with an air of conscious power, he handed his MS. to
the devil in waiting, and then, walking leisurely home, retired,
with ineffable dignity to bed.
Meantime the devil, to whom the copy was entrusted, ran up stairs to
his 'case,' in an unutterable hurry, and forthwith made a commencement
at 'setting' the MS. 'up.'
In the first place, of course,- as the opening word was 'So,'- he
made a plunge into the capital S hole and came out in triumph with a
capital S. Elated by this success, he immediately threw himself upon
the little-o box with a blindfold impetuosity- but who shall
describe his horror when his fingers came up without the anticipated
letter in their clutch? who shall paint his astonishment and rage at
perceiving, as he rubbed his knuckles, that he had been only
thumping them to no purpose, against the bottom of an empty box.
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