dovetail. Adolph couldn't possibly throw his arms around Mary if one
was buried in the field of battle and the other was minced up in a
saw-mill, and he couldn't clasp her to his bosom unless he threw a
lasso with his teeth and hauled her in by swallowing the slack of the
rope. As for the piano--well, you know as well as I do that an armless
man can't play a Beethoven sonata unless he knows how to perform on
the instrument with his nose, and in that case you insult the popular
intelligence when you talk about 'sweet poetic fervor.' I have my
fingers on the public pulse, and I know they won't stand it."

"Well, well," said Stack, "I don't know how I ever came to--"

"Let me direct your attention to another incendiary matter,"
interrupted the major. "In the first love-scene between Adolph
and--and--let me see--what's her name?--Mary--you say that 'her liquid
blue eye rested softly upon him as he poured forth the story of his
love, and its azure was dimmed by a flood of happy tears.' Well, sir,
about twenty pages farther on, where the villain insults her, you
observe that her black eyes flashed lightning at him and seemed to
scorch him where he stood. Now, let me direct attention to the fact
that if the girl's eyes were blue they couldn't be black; and if you
mean to convey the impression that she had one blue eye and one black
eye, and that she only looked softly at Adolph out of the off eye,
while the near eye roamed around, not doing anything in particular,
why, she is too phenomenal for a novel, and only suitable for a place
in the menagerie by the side of the curiosities. And then you say that
although her eye was liquid yet it scorched the villain. People
won't put up with that kind of thing. It makes them delirious and
murderous."