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The book-editor next came in, obtaining a clutch upon the brute by the ears; the musical critic followed and seized the tail with both hands, and a number of reporters, armed with inkstands and sharpened pencils, came next, followed by a dozen policemen with brandished clubs; at the same time, the engineer in the basement received the preconcerted signal and got ready his hose, wherewith to pour boiling hot water upon the heads of, those in the streets, in case it should prove a regular systematized attack by gorillas, Brazil apes, and chimpanzees.

What velvet-bound volumes, mother-of-pearl albums, inkstands representing beasts of the field, prie-dieu chairs, and wonderful knick-knacks I can recollect!

The only persons one saw there were a couple of attendants who were laying out new pens and filling inkstands. "The women," said Massot with a laugh, after another glance at the galleries, "come here just as they might come to a menagerie, that is, in the secret hope of seeing wild beasts devour one another. But, by the way, did you read the article in the 'Voix du Peuple' this morning?

Lord Tranmore had been in office himself, and the room, with its bookshelves filled with volumes in worn calf bindings, its solid writing-tables and leather sofas, its candlesticks and inkstands of old silver, slender and simple in pattern, its well-worn Turkey carpet, and its political portraits "the Duke," Johnny Russell, Lord Althorp, Peel, Melbourne seemed, to the observer on the rug, steeped in the typical habit and reminiscence of English public life.

Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels; the gentry, gaily drest, are dashing up and down in carriages on the Chiaja, or walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet letter-writers, perched behind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of the Great Theater of San Carlo, in the public street, are waiting for clients.

But greater honour was in store. One day the cardinal sent for him, and after praising the beauty of his work took him in his coach to the Vatican; and up a private stair to a luxurious little room, with a great oriel window. Here were inkstands, sloping frames for writing on, and all the instruments of art.

Either the perceptive end-organs become color-blind and read yellow for blue, or are astigmatic and report oval for round; or the conducting nerve-strands tangle up the messages, or deliver them to the wrong centre; or the central clearing-house, puzzled by the crooked messages, loses its head, and begins to throw the inkstands about, or goes down in a sulk.

These observations are not for the "heaven-born," who from their closets scan with eagle glance fields of battle, whose mighty pens slay their thousands and their tens of thousands, and in whose "Serbonian" inkstands "armies whole" disappear; but it is hoped that they may prove useful to the young adopting the profession of arms, who may feel assured that the details of the art of war afford "scope and verge" for the employment of all their faculties.

There were shining inkstands whose drawers were still stocked with the wafers used for sealing letters in the days of Lydia Languish.

On one of the later visits this gentleman was not visible, but in his place a red-headed, freckled youth, with the map of Scotland outlined on his rugged countenance, presided over the collection of inkstands and ledgers.