Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/70

62 well arranged, which, like this of Vierstadten, allowed dogs openly to scour about, when their tails were wanting? “What am I to do,” said I, “when this member is cut away, and any such beast comes running towards me, and I cannot, either by the tail being cocked up or being drawn in, since the whole is snipt off, come to any conclusion whether the vermin is mad or not? In this way, the most prudent man may be bit, and become rabid, and so make shipwreck purely for want of a tail-compass.”

The Blind Passenger (he now got himself inscribed as a Seeing one, God knows for what objects) had heard my observation; which he now spun out in my presence almost into ridicule, and at last awakened in me the suspicion, that by an overdone flattery in imitating my style of speech, he meant to banter me. “The Dog-tail,” said he, “is, in truth, an alarm-beacon, and finger-post for us, that we come not even into the outmost precincts of madness: cut away from Comets their tails, from Bashaws theirs, from Crabs theirs (outstretched it denotes that they are burst); and in the most dangerous predicaments of life we are left without clew, without indicator, without hand in margine j and we perish, not so much as knowing how.”

For the rest, this stage passed over without quarrelling 01 peril. About ten o’clock, the whole party, including even the Postillion, myself excepted, fell asleep. I indeed pretended to be sleeping, that I might observe whether some one, for his own good reasons, might not also be pretending it; but all continued snoring; the moon threw its brightening beams on nothing but down-pressed eyelids.

I had now a glorious opportunity of following Lavater’s counsel, to apply the physiognomical ellwand specially to sleepers, since sleep, like death, expresses the genuine form in coarser lines. Other sleepers not in stage-coaches I think it less advisable to mete with this ellwand; having always an apprehension lest some fellow, but pretending to be asleep, may, the