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The presents I made him were unquestionably handsome; but he was not content without begging from me the share I had reserved for the other Pangerans; and afterward, through Mr. Williamson, solicited more trifles, such as sugar, penknives, and the like.
So our penknives did the trick. Dollops was digging, when something suddenly exploded, and shot up into our faces with a volume of gassy smoke. We sprang back, throwing our arms up to shield our eyes, and after the fumes had subsided returned to our task.
They tore and hacked at the poor creatures with penknives and any weapon they could get, they carved their names on them and stopped up their blow-holes with stones, till the place was a perfect shambles and the blood soaked into the sand as into an arena in ancient Rome.... Nobody could stop them. It was a sight to make one weep for shame that one was a man." Ishmael lay in silence.
The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffusing.
"On the table under your nose." My eyes fell with the rest, but no pearl was there; only the contents of our pockets our watches, pocket-books, pencils, penknives, cigarette cases lay on the shiny table along with the revolvers already mentioned. "Ye're humbuggin' us," said Mackenzie. "What's the use?" "I'm doing nothing of the sort," laughed Raffles. "I'm testing you. Where's the harm?"
There were corsets and Noah's arks, salt fish and sugar almonds, Chinese Joshes and Little Samuels, accordeons and fish horns, almanacs, Joe Millers, and Bibles, toothpicks and churns, silver thimbles and wash tubs, penknives, tweezers and pickaxes, Adams and Eves in sugar, and Napoleons in brass. In short, what was there not in that shop?
They were made by high-priced tailors and were fashionably cut, but he lived in them so violently that is, traveled so much, walked so much, sat so long and so hard, gestured so earnestly, and carried in his many pockets such an extraordinary collection of notebooks, indelible pencils, card-cases, stamp-boxes, penknives, gold toothpicks, thermometers, and what not that within twenty-four hours after he had donned new clothes all the artistic merits of the garments were obliterated; they were, from every point of view, hopelessly degenerate.
Then he proceeded to point out the way by suggesting penknives; and the trick was done. We were ever open to suggestions. We had another teacher whose pet aversion was match heads. Cicero and Demosthenes would have apologized to him could they have come in when he was delivering one of his eloquent orations upon this engaging theme.
He had stopped to look at three penknives fastened to a card, which was propped up in the little show-window, supported on one side by a chess-board with "History of Asia" in gilt letters on the back, and on the other by a small violin labelled "1 dollar."
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