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Page 35
Meantime the ponderous and terrific Scythe of Time (for I now
discovered the literal import of that classical phrase) had not
stopped, nor was it likely to stop, in its career. Down and still
down, it came. It had already buried its sharp edge a full inch in my
flesh, and my sensations grew indistinct and confused. At one time I
fancied myself in Philadelphia with the stately Dr. Moneypenny, at
another in the back parlor of Mr. Blackwood receiving his invaluable
instructions. And then again the sweet recollection of better and
earlier times came over me, and I thought of that happy period when
the world was not all a desert, and Pompey not altogether cruel.
The ticking of the machinery amused me. Amused me, I say, for my
sensations now bordered upon perfect happiness, and the most trifling
circumstances afforded me pleasure. The eternal click-clak,
click-clak, click-clak of the clock was the most melodious of music
in my ears, and occasionally even put me in mind of the graceful
sermonic harangues of Dr. Ollapod. Then there were the great figures
upon the dial-plate -- how intelligent how intellectual, they all
looked! And presently they took to dancing the Mazurka, and I think
it was the figure V. who performed the most to my satisfaction. She
was evidently a lady of breeding. None of your swaggerers, and
nothing at all indelicate in her motions. She did the pirouette to
admiration -- whirling round upon her apex. I made an endeavor to
hand her a chair, for I saw that she appeared fatigued with her
exertions -- and it was not until then that I fully perceived my
lamentable situation. Lamentable indeed! The bar had buried itself
two inches in my neck. I was aroused to a sense of exquisite pain. I
prayed for death, and, in the agony of the moment, could not help
repeating those exquisite verses of the poet Miguel De Cervantes:
Vanny Buren, tan escondida
Query no te senty venny
Pork and pleasure, delly morry
Nommy, torny, darry, widdy!
But now a new horror presented itself, and one indeed sufficient to
startle the strongest nerves. My eyes, from the cruel pressure of the
machine, were absolutely starting from their sockets. While I was
thinking how I should possibly manage without them, one actually
tumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep side of the
steeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along the eaves of the
main building. The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolent
air of independence and contempt with which it regarded me after it
was out. There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airs
it gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been
disgusting. Such a winking and blinking were never before seen. This
behavior on the part of my eye in the gutter was not only irritating
on account of its manifest insolence and shameful ingratitude, but
was also exceedingly inconvenient on account of the sympathy which
always exists between two eyes of the same head, however far apart. I
was forced, in a manner, to wink and to blink, whether I would or
not, in exact concert with the scoundrelly thing that lay just under
my nose. I was presently relieved, however, by the dropping out of
the other eye. In falling it took the same direction (possibly a
concerted plot) as its fellow. Both rolled out of the gutter
together, and in truth I was very glad to get rid of them.
The bar was now four inches and a half deep in my neck, and there was
only a little bit of skin to cut through. My sensations were those of
entire happiness, for I felt that in a few minutes, at farthest, I
should be relieved from my disagreeable situation. And in this
expectation I was not at all deceived. At twenty-five minutes past
five in the afternoon, precisely, the huge minute-hand had proceeded
sufficiently far on its terrible revolution to sever the small
remainder of my neck. I was not sorry to see the head which had
occasioned me so much embarrassment at length make a final separation
from my body. It first rolled down the side of the steeple, then
lodge, for a few seconds, in the gutter, and then made its way, with
a plunge, into the middle of the street.
I will candidly confess that my feelings were now of the most
singular -- nay, of the most mysterious, the most perplexing and
incomprehensible character. My senses were here and there at one and
the same moment. With my head I imagined, at one time, that I, the
head, was the real Signora Psyche Zenobia -- at another I felt
convinced that myself, the body, was the proper identity. To clear my
ideas on this topic I felt in my pocket for my snuff-box, but, upon
getting it, and endeavoring to apply a pinch of its grateful contents
in the ordinary manner, I became immediately aware of my peculiar
deficiency, and threw the box at once down to my head. It took a
pinch with great satisfaction, and smiled me an acknowledgement in
return. Shortly afterward it made me a speech, which I could hear but
indistinctly without ears. I gathered enough, however, to know that
it was astonished at my wishing to remain alive under such
circumstances. In the concluding sentences it quoted the noble words
of Ariosto--
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