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Page 63
Then after a pause he continued:
"Pretty good, that talk of Masus�lili's through the faucet--pretty good,
pretty good! But, pshaw! for me there's nothing new on earth. Why, sir,
I've always drawn my best philosophy out of a spigot-hole. The very
sight of a spigot inspires me, and drives away my troubles. But, man
alive! We must keep this thing secret. The fellow with an exhaustless
stock of _elixir vit�_ isn't half worked out in fiction yet--and
besides, how can a person reread his 'Wandering Jew,' and his 'Last Days
of Pompeii,' and his 'Zanoni,' with such an outlandish picture as a
mystic under a lamp-warmed vase in mind? Why didn't Bainbridge take a
not unusual historical license, and say that the aged philosopher was
found warming himself before a crystal vase filled with magically
glowing rubies?"
After we had laughed a little over this, he said:
"And I suppose Bainbridge tried--in fact I know by what you say that he
did try--to air his knowledge on the subject of animal heat? No doubt
talked for half an hour about the effects of cold on the animal economy?
Oh, he's a rapid man! You heard, sir, how idiotically he talked that
day, just before I cured old man Peters? If Bainbridge had had his way,
Peters' story would have been a short one. I suppose his remedy for a
frozen Hili-lite would be to send him to the North Pole! Now, sir, I
instantly grasped the whole idea of the necessary effect of that cold
wave on those Hili-lites, for I now have data in abundance for reading
those people through and through. In a word, sir--and observe my
sententious brevity--their thermogenistic organization being adynamic,
and their thermolysic functions being over-active owing to their thermic
environment, and the thermotaxic balance being habitually anomalous, the
emergency was not successfully encountered; and this was more
particularly the case because the nerve-centres of vital resistance to
sudden and extreme thermal abstraction were atrophied."
This was the last remark, except a few words of farewell at the time of
my departure for home, that I ever heard from Doctor Castleton. It was
his habit, as he was about to leave the presence of an auditor or
interlocutor, to fire off, so to speak, a set speech, or a piece of
surprising information, and then hastily to retreat--a habit displaying
considerable sagacity, and one engendered by street-corner discussion,
in which a return fire--or perhaps a troublesome question--was often to
be avoided if a dramatic climax was not to be sacrificed. On this
occasion, as the last words left his lips he vanished through the
doorway, and we were alone.
"Well," said Arthur, "am I allowed to speak?"
"You are," I replied.
"Then tell me," said he, "what it was he said? Why doesn't he, some day
when he has time, dictate a dictionary? And isn't there any way to stop
such talk by law? That man gets worse instead of better. He forgets
everything except words. Says he, the other day, 'Well, Arthur, my boy,
when are you coming in to pay your doctor bill?' Now mind, I paid him
a'ready, and just think of my teeth! But I told him, nice and easy, how
I paid him the two dollars. Then I told him about my teeth rattlin'
whenever I go down the stairs, and asked him what to do for them. He
just laughed and gave me a half-dollar, and said, 'Bone-set tea, my
boy--drink bone-set tea, and plenty of it;' and so I do."
The TWENTIETH Chapter
"Pym left the exiles," said Bainbridge, on the following evening, as, in
accordance with his engagement, he continued the story of the great
storm in Hili-li; "and hastened on toward his home. Arrived there, he
went directly to the cellar, where he found the three large lamps
alight, brilliantly illuminating and comfortably warming the apartment;
but Lilama was missing, though he found there one of her maids. This
girl told Pym that Lilama had, some four hours earlier, taken with her
her maid Ixza, and hastened from the house. Questioned closely, she said
that after Pym had gone, Lilama suddenly bethought her of a former
servant, an old nurse, who for some years past had lived quite alone,
and that Lilama had decided to have the poor old woman found, and cared
for. It seems that when the young wife was herself in safety and had the
mental leisure to think of others, the thought of her poor old servant
and friend in danger grew more and more unbearable. She had waited
almost an hour for Pym to return, and then, taking Ixza with her, had
gone forth; but where the old nurse resided, only Lilama and Ixza knew.
The maid knew only that Lilama had left the cellar with the intention of
assisting, in some manner, the nurse of her babyhood.
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