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The professors who charm snakes and munch live-coals would all be hangers-on of his house; and he would have periodical concerts by those five musicians who played such desert lullabies for us conspicuously one patriarch whose double-bass was made from an orange-tree and would not forget to supplement their honorarium of five dollars with jorums of white wine. Sly special pleaders!
Probably this last property has its genesis in the belief that live-coals from the yule-log may be placed on the linen cloth spread for the Great Supper without setting it on fire a belief which prudent housewives always are shy of putting to a practical test.
"What do you refer to as encouraging, Avon?" asked his uncle. "There's a storm in the air; we are going to have a regular driving rain, that will soak the roof until a ton of live-coals on the top wouldn't set fire to the planking." "Baby is right," said Ballyhoo, with a nod of his head; "rain will fall within twelve hours."
He was just in time, as he leapt lightly off the windfall, to avoid the rush of a vast brown bulk, reeking of carrion, furry, terrible, with live-coals for eyes, and threshing the air with claws Heaven knows how long, which hurled itself like an avalanche out of the hollow at him. And that thing was a bear.
Drawing a chair before one of the coffee-room fires to think about him at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his happiness to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking, as they broke and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and separations that had marked my life.
He is followed at a short distance by a travelling tinker, swinging his live-coals in a sort of tin censer, and giving utterance to a hoarse and horrible cry, intelligible only to the cook who has a leaky sauce-pan. Then comes the chamois-leather woman, bundled about with damaged skins, in request for the polishing of plate and plated wares.
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