Page:Paine--J Archibauld McKaney collector of whiskers.djvu/79

  me trooped Boston clubmen, deep-water skipper, sea-cook, physician, artist and lawyer, all of them eager to know more about the reason for my interest in them. I ushered them into my "work-shop," and directed them to be seated at random on three rows of chairs which were arranged on a platform at one end of the spacious room. They stared with amazement at the seeming chaos of intricate machinery that filled the place and I hastened to explain:

"We will set to work, gentlemen, according to my tentative diagrams of the respective tonal qualities of your whiskers. Captain Rust is placed at the lowest note of the scale to begin with."

The old gentleman rebelled at being put lower in the scale than the Portuguese sea-cook and swore that he outranked the "putty-faced son of a tea-kettle." The more intelligent members of the orchestra grasped the fact, however, that the longer and more luxuriant the whisker the lower must be the pitch of the resultant musical note, and that I had [61