“This,” he said, “is my coffin; I always travel with it. Now, when I break my neck, I shall be hurriedly embalmed and packed into it. You see this paper gummed inside the box? It contains instructions from the doctor himself, written in four languages, for the undertakers, who will lay me out. Look, here are the directions.”
The Serpent-man stooped down with the lamp in his hand; I knelt beside him, and read—
“The persons who place the acrobat, J. H. Walter, in this coffin, are begged to inject a solution of chloride of mercury and acetic acid into his veins, according to the method used by the American, Doctor Ure.
“In default of the above, an injection of about four quarts and a half of sulphate of zinc may be used. The latter is even preferable, if the coffin will be more than forty days on the road.”
“Well,” said the acrobat when I had finished reading, “what do you think of it all?”
“I think, my friend, that you must have been tempted more than once to leave this box in the cloak-room.” [p256]
I smiled as I spoke, hoping to induce the Englishman to speak out; but the Serpent-man replied rather dryly—
“No, sir; such a temptation has never occurred to me: a gentleman keeps his word.”
. . . . The performance of carpet acrobatics is something like a state of larva to gymnasts. They all aspire to take flight.