“Tip it a leetle bit—very leetle now.”
“Dear uncle, it is tipped already as far as it can be. Don’t you see it rests now square on its bottom?”
“You, Yorpy, take your black hoof from under the box!”
This gust of passion on the part of my uncle made the matter seem still more dubious and dark. It was a bad symptom, I thought.
“Surely you can tip it just a leetle more!”
“Not a hair, uncle.”
“Blast and blister the cursed box then!” roared my uncle, in a terrific voice, sudden as a squall. Running at the box, he dashed his bare foot into it, and with astonishing power all but crushed in the side. Then seizing the whole box, he disemboweled it of all its anacondas and adders, and, tearing and wrenching them, flung them right and left over the water.
“Hold, hold, my dear, dear uncle!—do for heaven’s sake desist. Don’t destroy so, in one frantic moment, all your long calm years of devotion to one darling scheme. Hold, I conjure!”
Moved by my vehement voice and uncontrollable tears, he paused in his work of destruction, and stood steadfastly eyeing me, or rather blankly staring at me, like one demented.
“It is not yet wholly ruined, dear uncle; come put it together now. You have hammer and wrench; put it together again, and try it once more. While there is life there is hope.”