Page:Knight's Quarterly Magazine series 1 volume 3 (August–November 1824).djvu/468

 is a private station;” and where is there one so private as that of a diver under the bed-clothes? Mr. Mule was well and scientifically tucked in upon three sides: as to the head, which certainly was the Achilles’s heel of his position, he had done his best to complete the lines of circumvallation by screwing down the clothes with both hands, and by doubling them under the weight of his head, which, he trusted, might resist Thor’s hammer as long as any part about him. On the whole, he felt himself entitled to say, that come would what come might, he positively would not be dislodged.

We shall see. Mr. Mule was positive, certainly; but the strongest positions have been forced, and the resolutions of the most restive persons have been baffled. At this moment he heard another storm driving at the windows, accompanied by shrill screams and feminine ululations. “God bless my soul,” said Mr. Mule, “here are all the ghosts from the Red Sea; and now one finds what comes of shutting a window in a ghost’s face.” Yes, the rationale of the assault was but too clear. Mule it was that had shut down the window which the ghosts had opened; he could not deny it; and Mule it is that must suffer for it. Bare poetical justice demanded that his window should be made the next object of attack. Mule saw all this, and Mule groaned; but Mule kept his position for all that. If he could get Mrs. Tabitha to take to the shutting down of the window, or to divide the blame with him, something might be done. But, lord! what’s the use of deliberating when the enemy are at the gates? Even whilst he yet deliberated, another clattering storm assailed the window; another peal of feminine ululation ascended, the panes began to crash, something or other rattled along the floor; in spite of all which, we are proud to state that Mr. Mule kept his position; and, lastly, something or other hit Mr. Mule in a region far more “practicable” than his head. If it was Thor’s hammer—at least it appeared that Thor’s hammer was no ghost; in consequence, Mule’s resolution, however mulish, gave way. Upwards he soared like a barrel of gunpowder, or like the fiend when touched by Ithuriel’s spear, or, according to our former comparison, like a rocket. At this moment Mule must have been a good study to the lovers of the picturesque, and still more at the next moment when he received a second rap over the shins. What passed in his mind during this ghostly agony it would be difficult even for Professor Kant to have assigned: thus much, however, is certain, that by the “association of ideas,” as Miss Hamilton would still be saying, the “tangible idea” of his own shins (to speak with David Hartley) suggested the “audible idea” of the young malefactor, whom, upon a certain night in former years, he had heard giggling behind a wall at a certain