ALAS! POOR DOCTOR.
“Arter that fight he looked as though he had been the subject in a dissectin’ room, with at least a dozen medical students peelin’ and hackin’ of him in the interests of science. The Doctor allowed that the erysipelas would set in, seein’ thar were so many small veins busted in his face, so he painted it all over with scarlet iodine as a precautionary measure.
“He did look like the very old Nick, and no mistake. His face was fearfully puffed up, you see, and his nose was knocked clear away round to one side. His mouth in particular was a study that a feller couldn’t git familiar with. It was a problem that the more you looked into the more your ideas got confused. It was swelled and twisted and run around, out of all shape and proportion.
“He had the terriblest time you ever heard of gittin’ his victuals into it and fairly started down his throat. Thar he would sit at the table explorin’ about for fully five minutes strivin’ to make the harbor, and when he couldn’t fetch it, he would draw the spoon back and look at it a while, plannin’ another expedition. He knew where his mouth ought to be, you see, and where it had been a few hours before, and to be obliged to canvass the whole of his head to find it, was somethin’ he wasn’t accustomed to.
“It seemed as if he never would git through jabbin’ the spoon about his face, and when he would finally strike the openin’, it would be away round on one side of his head, so much so in fact, that a person would think he was pourin’ the soup into his ear. He would be all hunkadory then durin’ the remainder of that meal, but the next time he would come to the table, the same performance would have to be gone through with.
“He couldn’t keep run of the thing, nohow. It was here to-day and somewhere else to-morrow, like a wrinkle in a shirt.
“The swellin’ kept shiftin’ and undulatin’ about continually, down in one place and up in another, all within an hour, and that would shove the mouth away down along the neck somewhere, or clear across to the other side of the head, perhaps.
“The family would be sittin’ thar eatin’ no more than he was, they would be so busily engaged watchin’ his singular manœuverin’, and it would make him so roarin’ mad that he would send ’em all away from the table.
“He tried to eat by the aid of a small lookin’ glass, but that didn’t work any better than goin’ it blind. When he saw how disfigured every feature was, his appetite would begin to git away from him pooty lively, and he would sling the glass into the corner, and fall to denouncin’ me like a crazy bush-whacker.