at my request, as if the
washing of hands at irregular times and seasons offered a comparatively
new subject of contemplation to him; but he rang a hand-bell on his
table immediately, and told the old servant to take me up into his
bedroom.

The interior of the parlor had astonished me; but a sight of the bedroom
was a new sensation--not of the most agreeable kind. The couch on which
the philosopher sought repose after his labors was a truckle-bed that
would not have fetched half a crown at a sale. On one side of it dangled
from the ceiling a complete male skeleton, looking like all that was
left of a man who might have hung himself about a century ago, and who
had never been disturbed since the moment of his suicide. On the other
side of the bed stood a long press, in which I observed hideous colored
preparations of the muscular system, and bottles with curious, twining,
thread-like substances inside them, which might have been remarkable
worms or dissections of nerves, scattered amicably side by side with
the Professor's hair-brush (three parts worn out), with remnants of
his beard on bits of shaving-paper, with a broken shoe-horn, and with
a traveling looking-glass of the sort usually sold at sixpence apiece.
Repetitions of the litter of books in the parlor lay all about over the
floor; colored anatomical prints were nailed anyhow against the walls;
rolled-up towels were scattered here, there, and everywhere in the
wildest confusion, as if the room had been bombarded with them; and
last, but by no means least remarkable among the other extraordinary
objects in the bed-chamber, the stuffed figure of a large unshaven
poodle-dog, stood on an old card-table, keeping perpetual watch over a
pair of the philosopher's black breeches twisted round his forepaws.

I had started, on entering the room, at the skeleton, and I started once
more at the dog. The old servant noticed me each time with a sardonic
grin. "Don't be afraid," he said; "one is as dead as the other." With
these words, he left me to wash my hands.

Finding little more than a pint of water at my disposal, and failing
altogether to discover where the soap was kept, I was not long in
performing my ablutions. Before leaving the room, I looked again at the
stuffed poodle. On the board to which he was fixed, I saw painted in
faded letters the word "Scarammuccia," evidently the comic Italian
name to which he had answered in his lifetime. There was no other
inscrip