Deacon Perkins gave vent to an unctuous negro chuckle. Then, holding up his forefinger to enjoin caution, he tiptoed off the platform, closely followed by the doctor; and before nightfall he was on his way to a private hospital for nervous diseases, where rest and a total abstention from negro-dialect stories is expected to restore him to his usual sane condition of mind in a short time.
XXIV
THE MISSING-WORD BORE
Then, there’s that bore whose thoughts come by freight, and the freight is always late. You know what’s coming, that is, you can imagine the way-bill, but he won’t let you help him to make better time, and runs his train of thought as if it were on a heavy grade.
He starts to tell a story, blinking his red eyes, meanwhile, as if he thought that they supplied the motive power for his tongue. To make listening to him the harder, he generally tells a very old story.
“One day, William Makepeace—er-er—”
“Thackeray,” you say, intending to help him. Of course it is Thackeray, and he was going to tell about the novelist and the Bowery boy; but he is so pig-headed that he shifts on to another track.
“No; Dickens, Charles Dickens. One day, when Charles Dickens was at work on ‘Bleak’—er—er—”