A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



He did not like to acknowledge that I had the 

 turn on him, and that he had blown off a great 



O 



deal more steam than was necessary. &quot; I ll just 

 get these heavy boots off,&quot; he said. 



&quot; Do,&quot; I replied, &quot;and drop all the other things 

 that annoy you at the same time. I haven t quite 

 relinquished my grip on my own waistband.&quot; 



Dear old leviathan ! He never was so majesti 

 cally human as during the next hour. He was 

 unreservedly proud, I could see, although he 

 tried to hide it, that his patient had not made a 

 monkey of himself, as he called it. He advised 

 me to read the story of &quot;Undine,&quot; and slapped 

 me on the back once or twice before he was quite 

 aware of it, and pulled out new jack-knives and 

 things from his capacious overcoat pocket for 

 Charlie. When he was comfortably spread out 

 before the fire, he brought forth a city news 

 paper. 



&quot; There may be a bit of good news in it,&quot; he 

 said. &quot;Look at the quotations. If you had dis 

 appointed me, I ll be hanged if I wouldn t have 

 carried it back without telling you.&quot; 



I uttered a note of surprise. &quot; Why, the Es- 

 meralda is up in the clouds twenty points.&quot; 



&quot;Yes, so I see. If you had stayed in the 

 market, you d have sold out. It is like one of 

 those letters of Napoleon s that he did not open. 

 It answered itself, and it s so with a good many 

 other things.&quot; 



I was figuring on the margin of the paper, and 

 did not heed him. 



310 



