Nevertheless, on most occasions this person would have maintained an
unshaken dexterity in avoiding its open door, but as the choice
admittedly lay in the hands of one who carried five hundred or a
thousand pieces of gold we went in together and passed through to a
compartment of retiring seclusion.
In our own land, O my orthodox-minded father, where the unfailing
resources of innumerable bands of dragons, spirits, vampires, ghouls,
shadows, omens, and thunderstorms are daily enlisted to carry into
effect the pronouncements of an appointed destiny, we have many
historical examples of the inexorably converging legs of coincidence,
but none, I think, more impressively arranged than the one now
descending this person's brush.
We had scarcely reposed ourselves, and taken from the hands of an
awaiting slave the vessels of thrice-potent liquid which in this Island
is regarded as the indispensable accompaniment to every movement of
existence, when a third person entered the room, and seating himself
at a table some slightly removed distance away, lowered his head and
abandoned himself to a display of most lavish dejection.
"That poor cuss doesn't appear to be holiday-making," remarked the
sincerely-compassionate person at my side, after closely observing the
other for a period; and then, moved by the overpowering munificence of
his inward nature, he called aloud, "Say, stranger, you seem to have
got it thickly in the neck.
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