ever title one chooses to give the thing, can look at its
product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it
has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is
jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates
like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop,
skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the cockered
children of the formation: and this is why the common rabble of nature
are so malicious and envious toward us. Their slim wretched fashion is
next door to the slimy eel: there is nothing edifying in such an
edifice. From that piece of monotony to the prawn is already a good
step; and how far above that is the seal! how do we surpass them both,
as well as the seastar, the crab, and the lobster, my trustiest
cousin, in our excursive irregularities, which defy all the
mathematicians in the world to find an expression for their law. But
coz, pray where did you get those two gorgeous teeth? the incomparable
couple cut a grand and gloomy figure there across the chasm ... of
your unfathomable mouth, and form a capital bridge over the gulf that
gapes between the dark cliffs of your gums."

"O you rogue! O you flatterer!" laught the old woman: "but your
darling chin that comes forward so complaisantly, and is so ready to
wait upon you and spread itself out like a table. Don't you think you
could put a good-sized platter upon it comfortably, where your mouth
might then quietly nibble away, while your hands were seeking work
elsewhere. This I call an economical arrangement."

"We won't spoil ourselves by too much praise;" said the dwarf: "we are
already, it seems, vain enough of our advantages; and after all we did
not give them to ourselves."

"You are right," said she. "But what profession are you of, cousin?
where do you live?"

"Oddly enough;" answered Beresynth: "sometimes here, sometimes there,
like a vagabond: however I now mean to settle quietly; and as I heard
there was still a near kinswoman of mine living, I resolved to seek
her out and beg her to come and live with me. This is what brought me
hither. In my youth I was an apothecary in Calabria; there they drove
me away, because they fancied I manufactured love-powders. O dear, as
if there was any need of 'em nowadays. Then once upon a time I was a
tailor; the outcry was, I thieved too much: a pastrycook; all accused
me of thinning the cat and dog population. I wanted to pu