60 The Mysterious Tailor: [Juxy, 
the weather put by one individual to his next neighbour, brought on 
a doleful history of the latter’s recent attack of gout ; this branched 
off to anecdotes of dyspepsia and indigestion, which in turn gave- 
place to an animated discussion on the nervous system. From this 
moment the conversation became general. Each individual had some 
invalid story to relate, and I too so far forgot my usual taciturnity 
as to indulge my hearers with a detail of my late indisposition—of 
its origin in the Mysterious Tailor—of the wretch’s inconceivable 
persecution—of the fiendish peculiarities of his appearance— of his 
astonishing ubiquity, and lastly, of my conviction that he was either 
more or less than man. Scarcely had the very uncourteous laugh- 
ter that accompanied this narrative concluded, when a low, inter- 
mittent snore, proceeding from a person close at my elbow, challenged 
my most serious notice. The sound was peculiar—original—unearthly 
—and reminded me of the same music which had so harrowed my 
nerves at Bologne. Yet it could not surely be he—he, the very 
thoughts of whom now sent a thrill through every vein. Oh, no! it 
must be some one else—there were other harmonious sternutators beside 
him, he could not be the only nasal nightingale in the three king- 
doms. While I thus argued the matter, silently yet suspiciously, 
a wandering gleam of day, streaming in at the coach windows, faintly 
. lit up a nose the penultimate peculiarities of which gave a very ominous 
turn to my reflections. In due time this light became more vivid; and 
beneath its encouraging influence, first, a pair of eyes—then two sallow 
juiceless cheeks, then an upper lip, then a projecting chin ; and lastly, 
the entire figure of the Mysterious Tailor himself, whose head, it seems, 
had hitherto been folded, bird-like, upon his breast, grew into atrocious 
distinctness, while from the depths of the creature’s throat came forth 
the strangely-solemn whisper, “touching that little account.” For this 
once, indignation got the better of affright. “Go where I will,” I 
exclaimed, passionately interrupting him, “I find I cannot avoid you, 
you have a supernatural gift of omnipresence, but be you fiend or mortal 
I will now grapple with you ;” and accordingly snatching at that 
obnoxious feature which, like the tail of the rattle-snake, had twice 
warned me of its master’s fatal presence, I grasped it with such zealous 
good will, that had it been of mortal manfacture it must assuredly have 
come off in my hands. Aroused by the laughter of my fellow passens 
gers, the coachman—who was just preparing to mount, after having 
changed horses at Dartford—abruptly opened the door, on which I as 
abruptly jumped out ; and after paying my fare the whole way to town, 
and casting on the fiend a look of “inextinguishable hatred,” made an 
instant retreat into the inn. About the middle of the next day I reached 
London, and without a moment’s pause hurried to the ledgings of my 
before-mentioned friend C Luckily he was at home, but started 
at the strange forlorn figure that presented itself. And well indeed he 
might. My eye-balls were glazed and bloody, my cheeks white as a 
shroud, my mouth a-jar, my lips blue and quivering. ‘ For God’s sake, 
C ;’ I began, vouchsafing no further explanation, “lend me—(E 
have specified the sum)—or I am ruined; that infernal, inconceivable 
Tailor has——’ C smilingly interrupted me by an instant compliance 
with my demand; on which, without a moment’s delay, I bounded off, 
breathless and. semi-frantic, towards my arch fiend’s- Pandemonium -at 
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