to force upward the ponderous iron bar.  I might as well have tried to lift the cathedral itself.  Down, down, down it came, closer and yet closer.  I screamed to Pompey for aid; but he said that I had hurt his feelings by calling him ‘an ignorant old squint-eye:’  I yelled to Diana; but she only said ‘bow-wow-wow,’ and that I had told her ’on no account to stir from the corner.’  Thus I had no relief to expect from my associates.

Meantime the ponderous and terrific Scythe of Time (for I now discovered the literal import of that classical phrase) had not stopped, nor was it likely to stop, in its career.  Down and still down, it came.  It had already buried its sharp edge a full inch in my flesh, and my sensations grew indistinct and confused.  At one time I fancied myself in Philadelphia with the stately Dr. Moneypenny, at another in the back parlor of Mr. Blackwood receiving his invaluable instructions.  And then again the sweet recollection of better and earlier times came over me, and I thought of that happy period when the world was not all a desert, and Pompey not altogether cruel.

The ticking of the machinery amused me.  Amused me, I say, for my sensations now bordered upon perfect happiness, and the most trifling circumstances afforded me pleasure.  The eternal click-clak, click-clak, click-clak of the clock was the most melodious of music in my ears, and occasionally even put me in mind of the graceful sermonic harangues of Dr. Ollapod.  Then there were the great figures upon the dial-plate —­ how intelligent how intellectual, they all looked!  And presently they took to dancing the Mazurka, and I think it was the figure V. who performed the most to my satisfaction.  She was evidently a lady of breeding.  None of your swaggerers, and nothing at all indelicate in her motions.  She did the pirouette to admiration —­ whirling round upon her apex.  I made an endeavor to hand her a chair, for I saw that she appeared fatigued with her exertions —­ and it was not until then that I fully perceived my lamentable situation.  Lamentable indeed!  The bar had buried itself two inches in my neck.  I was aroused to a sense of exquisite pain.  I prayed for death, and, in the agony of the moment, could not help repeating those exquisite verses of the poet Miguel De Cervantes: 

Vanny Buren, tan escondida

Query no te senty venny

Pork and pleasure, delly morry

Nommy, torny, darry, widdy!

But now a new horror presented itself, and one indeed sufficient to startle the strongest nerves.  My eyes, from the cruel pressure of the machine, were absolutely starting from their sockets.  While I was thinking how I should possibly manage without them, one actually tumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep side of the steeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along the eaves of the main building.  The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolent air of independence and contempt with