hen I started to explain to him about the
Huxley Institute theory of frictional electricity and the aurora
borealis.

"I can't tell what he said, sir, in reply, with reference to the aurora
borealis, because I'm a decent man and never use no low language; but
suddenly he jumped on me, and the first thing I knowed I was being
lifted in the ambulance and fetched to this yer hospital. Was it right,
sir, do you think, for William Jones to strike me foul, like that, while
I was trying to state my case to him? No, sir. But that's not the worst
of it. Last Tuesday word came to me that Bella Dougherty had throwed
me over and is going to marry William Jones on Decoration Day! Think
of that, sir!" and Mordecai Barnes turned his head upon his pillow and
moaned.

Turning again toward me, he was about to resume his statement, when
suddenly he exclaimed: "Why, there's Aunt Maggie."

A woman of fifty years, nicely clad, came to the bedside and said to him
coldly:

"Is that you, Mordecai Barnes?"

"Yes, Aunt Maggie."

"I'm ashamed of you, Mordecai Barnes," said she; "ashamed of you. It
served you right. You got just what was comin' to you. I wish William
had banged you worse."

Mordecai Barnes groaned.

"And more than that," continued Aunt Maggie, glaring at him through her
spectacles, "I've torn up my old will which named you my sole heir and
made a new one and left all my property to this yer very hospital."

With these words Aunt Maggie walked away and left the room.

Mordecai Barnes could not speak for a few minutes. He looked as if death
would be welcome. Then, pulling the bedclothes up under his chin and
closing his eyes wearily, he said:

"Curse the day, say I, when George Watkins first went to the Huxley
Institute and heard about frictional electricity."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Frictional Electricity, by Max Adeler

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