to enrage no Johnson, by slight, prejudice,
or deprecation. But to suffer the infliction of a crack-brained old
naturalist, repeating an interminable manuscript in my own office,
went beyond my best resolve! Still there was little to do. It would be
a paltry task to select a poem for illustration, and had not this
same Ancient Mariner suggested an admirable one?

"I can grant your request in part, Mr. Jones," I said at length; "you
may read one hour; and if at the end of that period I do not think
favorably of your article, you must promise to read no further."

The old gentleman gave his parole at once, took a pair of great green
spectacles from a sea-grass case, and blowing his nose again, rained
pebbles and marine shells over the whole office. When he took the
manuscript from my hand, I saw the shining something distinctly on the
top of his head; and when he sat back to read, he was a perfect copy
of a dry old king-fish, looking through a pair of staring, glaring,
green eyes. Without more ado, and in a rippling kind of voice, as of
the rushing of deep water, the old naturalist read the following
introduction to a most wonderful manuscript:

"At a very early period of my life I manifested an inclination for the
study of the sciences. In my eighteenth year I submitted a theory of
inter-stellar telegraphing to the Gymnotian Academy. It was my purpose
to have placed the papers simultaneously before the scientific bodies
of each of the seven planets in our constellation, but having no
capital, the design failed, though I was complimented thereupon by the
'Institute for Harmonizing the Universes,' and elected a contributing
member of that society. For several years I petitioned annually for
outfit and transportation to Scilly Islands,[2] on the Ecliptic
Circle, where I purposed to develop my scheme of transferring a
portion of our globe to the system of Orion. In this I was opposed by
the Palaeontologic Society, on the ground that some valuable fossils
were presumed to be there; and Parliament, opining that my protests
were subversive of the law of gravity, rejected them. A number of
projects, each of which, I firmly believe, would have benefited my
kind, and facilitated correspondence between all created beings,
terminated unfortunately, and my relatives at length placed it out of
my power to continue these philanthropic exertions. For some years I
was denied the ear of man, and in the interval my hair grew gray and
my