ic-cup!"

"Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation."

Here the visitor bowed and withdrew--in what manner could not
precisely be ascertained--but in a well-concerted effort to discharge
a bottle at "the villain," the slender chain was severed that depended
from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of
the lamp.

THE PRINTER'S DEVIL

As I was sitting in my armchair and preparing an essay on the Devil in
literature, sleep overpowered me; the pen fell from my hands, and my
head reclined upon the desk. I had been thinking so much about the
Devil in my waking hours, that the same idea pursued me after I had
fallen asleep. I heard a gentle rap at the door, and having bawled out
as usual, "Come in," a little gentleman entered, wrapped in a large
blue cloth cloak, with a slouched hat, and goggles over his eyes.
After bowing and scraping with considerable ceremony, he took off his
hat, and threw his cloak over the back of a chair, when I immediately
perceived that my visitor was no mortal. His face was hideously ugly;
the skin appearing very much like wet paper, and the forehead covered
with those cabalistic signs whose wondrous significance is best known
to those who correct the press. On the end of his long hooked nose
there seemed to me to be growing, like a carbuncle, the first letter
of the alphabet, glittering with ink and ready to print. I observed,
also, that each of his fingers and toes, or rather claws, was in the
same manner terminated by one of the letters of the alphabet; and as
he slashed round his tail to brush a fly off his nose, I noticed that
the letter Z formed the extremity of that useful member. While I was
looking with no small astonishment and some trepidation at my
extraordinary visitor, he took occasion to inform me that he had
taken liberty to call, as he was afraid I might forget him in the
treatise which I was writing--an omission which he assured me would
cause him no little mortification. "In me," says he, "you behold the
prince and patron of printers' devils. My province is to preside over
the hell of books; and if you will only take the trouble to accompany
me a little way, I will show you some of the wonders of that world."
As my imagination had lately been much excited by perusing Dante's
_Inferno_, I was delighted with an adventure which promised to turn
out something like his wonderful journey, and I readily consented to
visit my new friend's do