Page:Letters to Squire Pedant in the East.pdf/24

SQUIRE PEDANT. 17 In consequence of my frequent commorations on account of the lutarious and salebrous condition of the roads, I had some opportunity of exercising my optic organs upon the aspect of the circumjacent regions. The sinuosities of the vales through lapideous mountains; the feracity of the terreous surface adjacent to the aqueous meanders; the celsitude of glandiferous and nuciferous trees, excited in me the greatest oblectation.

I and Indagator extended our quotidian locomotion until, one vesper, we arrived at a hostelry of delectable appearance. Every concomitant of the establishment had undergone depuration. All the factotums were sedulously employed. I ambled cautelously into the posterior department of the extruction, where I espied the most sanguinary scenes. There took place the trucidations of pennated and plumous bipeds, by decollation, and of vituline, ovine, and other quadrupeds by the exantlation of their sanguineous fluid. Some of the plumous and aligerous bipeds were undergoing deplumation – some of the quadrupeds were in a process of excoriation, and others subject to a depilatory.

The propinquity of these operations to my visual powers evocated in me the conviction that an epulation was approximating; and being somewhat scrutinous, I received cognoscence that on the postnate day, a sponsal epulation was to occur. In my confabulation with the cauponator antecedent to couchée, we produced, in the progress of our enterparlance, mutual and indubious apodixis that we stood in the relation of germans to each other — that his paternal and my maternal parent had one paternity. But in consequence of his great seniority to me, and his early decession from home, we had anterior to that evening, been in a state of nescience to each other. My concinnity of abearance, and his great comity, as well as