Nothing
could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of
tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his
trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after essence-of peppermint, and
didn't make a mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun
and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his
fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist
when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer
days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that
redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she got over it. He
ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself
sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet
churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and
gone to decay. Ah, no; he came home as drunk as a piper, and got into
the station-house the first thing.
And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them
all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and
rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his
native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the
legislature.
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