'The cord-drawer there should unlace,' replied the other. 'But he resembles an ox triced up to be shod, more than a lady in corsets.'
'That saying is rather too ox-umorious for the occasion,' returned the éléve.
'Do you chew tobacco, my friend?' said the chief operator to the almost exhausted patient.
'I haven't chewed any lately,' he groaned.
'So much the better then. Mr. Aster, let me have a little out of your box. There—ah!'
'Here, my good man, take that,' he continued, presenting the grateful boon to the patient. 'Eat it: if you have not been accustomed to chewing, I am in hopes it will make you sick.'
This weed, it is known, produces the most deadly nausea and exhaustion in those not addicted to its use. It is customary to employ it in cases of this nature, where habit does not intervene, to incapacitate the patient for making any voluntary exertion in opposition to the extension, which purpose it answers even better than bleeding.
The occupation temporarily relieved him by changing the current of his thoughts, and he reclined in a state of utter listlessness and évanouissement, only interrupted by occasional retchings. The surgeons perceived the favorable opportunity; but the moment a movement was made to seize it, his muscles were on the alert, and it became a struggle between the unaided energies of a desperate man, and the mechanically-exerted force of an equally hardy but less excited opponent.
'Come, be calm, and do not strain so.'
'I can't help it!' The surgeons knew it.