Then he gave us the third round. He grasped our head firmly in his hands, and pressed our various bumps with fingers that seemed to be about the size and shape of chocolate-eclairs. But they were not soft. On the contrary, they were very hard indeed. Just when we felt sure that our last bump had given way under the pressure, he rocked our head violently from side to side, backwards and forwards. Reducing us to a momentary condition of coma by gouging his thumbs into us at that sensitive point where one's spinal column joins one's cerebellum—or is it one's medulla oblongata?—he seized us by the hands, each in turn, wobbled our wrists, twisted our fingers, and finally did his best to remove our thumbs completely. This, we believe, is what alienists call the "thumb test."
The Professor sat down. All this time he had preserved an absolute and ominous silence. Now he gazed at us with melancholy interest, and we nerved ourself to hear the worst. Immediately he plunged into an abyss of statistics. We can recall only a few of them, and probably these few are not altogether correct. We never were much good at arithmetic. Besides, the Professor reeled them off at breathless speed.
"The average head is twinty-wan to twinty-wan and a half inches in circumference," he roared in a voice that would easily carry a block in all directions, "and your head is twinty-three and a half. Over the dome the average head is twilve to twilve and a half inches; yours is fourteen. In len'th the average head is siven to siven and a half inches; yours is eight and a half. And your head is six and three-quarter inches woide, while the average is only foive and a half."
We asked if he had any objections to our jotting down a few of those figures. He had.
"Niver you mind, niver you mind," said the Professor impatiently, waving our question aside, "ye don't need them. You listen to me and to what Oi'm tellin' ye. It doesn't matter if ye forgit thim misurements. But here is wan Oi don't want ye to forgit. This is the most important of thim all. Oi misured ye over the oiyes to the temporo-mandible j'int. Well, the average woman misures there from tin and a half to ilivin inches; and the average man from ilivin to ilivin and a half. And many a foine, dacent, respectable man comes in to me that doesn't misure over tin and a half. But you, me young man, you misure twilve and wan-eighth inches."
The Professor leaned back to let it soak in. We gasped in delighted amazement. What do you know about that?—"twilve and wan-eighth" inches to our temporo-mandibles! Nothing cheap about our mandibles, eh, what?
"Av coorse," said the Professor deprecatingly, "Napoleon misured fourteen inches; the Duke of Wellington misured thirteen; and Timothy Eaton—gawd rest his soul!—misured twilve and three-quarters."
We were out-classed! There could be no doubt of it. But then who are we that we should compete with the great immortals, with Bonaparte and the Iron Duke and the founder of a department-store? Besides, we were in good company with our "twilve and wan-eighth." So we plucked up heart of grace and listened cheerfully to the Professor as he continued.
"You have a foine head," said he, "one of the foinest that has come to me in a year or more. But it's a head that requoires special attintion. In fact, it requoires moy thurd course, which is tin dollars. Me terms is always the same. There is no change and no reduction. It is two dollars for a plain readin', foive dollars for a chart, and foive dollars extry for me thurd course of special attintion and secret advoice. Just that, tin dollars, no more and no less!"
The Professor said it with great solemnity and impressive slowness, especially the last phrase, presumably with a view to forestalling any endeavor on our part to obtain this wonderful "thurd" course for nine dollars and a half or eight-ninety-eight. We dismissed the whole subject, and asked him what calling in life we seemed best fitted for—if any.