But I am
tired out--entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some
hope!" I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:
"This transcends everything! everything that ever did occur! Why you
poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing
--you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself--the real Cardiff
Giant is in Albany!--[A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and
fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine"
Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real
colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a
museum is Albany,]--Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"
I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation,
overspread a countenance before.
The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
"Honestly, is that true?"
"As true as I am sitting here."
He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood
irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands
where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping
his chin on his breast); and finally said:
"Well-I never felt so absurd before.
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