“A demurrer,” said Horatio, laughing. “Look at him! That there ladder’s the Judicatur Act: don’t it reach a height? There’s as many rounds in that there ladder as would take a man a lifetime to go up if it was all spread out; it’s just like them fire escapes in reaching up, but nobody ever escapes by it.”
“It will break the poor man’s back,” said I, as he was a few feet from the top. And then in my dream I thought he fell; and the fright was so great that I awoke, and found I was sitting in my easy chair by the fire, and the pipe I had been smoking had fallen out of my hand.
* * * * *
“You’ve been dreaming,” said my wife; “and I fear have had a nightmare.” When I was thoroughly aroused, and had refilled my pipe, I told her all my dream.
Then cried she, “I hope good Mr. Bumpkin will get up safely with that great bundle.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said I, “whether he do or not; he will have to bear its burden, whether he take it up or bring it back. He will have to bring it down again after showing it to the gentlemen at the top.”
“What do they want to see it for?” cried she.
“They have no wish to see it,” I replied; “on the contrary, they would rather not. They will simply say he is a very foolish man for his pains to clamber up so high with so useless a burden.”
“But why don’t they check him?”
“Because they have no power; they look and wonder at the folly of mankind, who can devise no better scheme of amusement for getting rid of their money.”