2IO Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



little way, then stop suddenly and buck. At last 

 he threw me, and when I struck the ground I found 

 myself jammed against the berth-rail. There! 

 The glorious truths of Mrs. Eddy flashed upon me 

 like a red-fire-raining sky-rocket. There wasn't 

 any sorrel horse. The sorrel horse didn't buck. 

 The whole thing was a seasick phantasm, or would 

 have been if I had been seasick — which I wasn't — 

 it was all a delusion, a sort of diabolical mirage, 

 a phosphorescent deglutition of the // by a tenuous 

 and sublimated vacuity. I grabbed the berth-rail 

 on one side, and the hat-peg on the other, and rose 

 to the occasion. "Avaunt!" I cried, "thou odylic 

 bedevilment, thou exsufflated banshee, thou shriek- 

 ing pandemonium, get out! Scat! Take thy beak 

 from out my heart and take thy form from off my 

 door!" 



It must have been my fault; every truly scien- 

 tific Scientist will say that it was, but the exorcism 

 did not work worth a cent. "Swish-whack!" went 

 the propeller with a force that made the ship 

 resound. "Whang-ze-ze-e-e-e!" went that cross 

 between a gong and a tambourine. "Uggle-uggle- 

 ach-whee!" went the water-pipe. Each of all three 

 was putting in its best licks in the devil's oratorio, 

 and paid not the least attention to my Christian 

 Science. 



