Page:Some unpublished letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau; a chapter in the history of a still-born book.djvu/29

 take undue advantage of so rare an opportunity). Being himself "as mild a mannered man as ever cut a throat," he owes it to himself to gently but plainly deprecate the ex-professor's lapses into the sarcastic. Both the editor and Herr Teufelsdröckh believe that sarcasm is the Devil's patois. As that is perilous stuff, he'll have none of it; the ex-professor must stand for his own petard: a proposition which he will be the last man to reject.

The typewritten text of the ex-professor's lecture is disfigured with pen-and-ink interlineations, and this is something so unusual that one who knows him so well as doth the editor could not resist the very natural curiosity which led to the asking for an explanation. This, as it fell from the ex-professor's lips, is too characteristic