THE TRIUMPHS OF A TAXIDERMIST


Here are some of the secrets of taxidermy. They were told me by the
taxidermist in a mood of elation. He told me them in the time between
the first glass of whisky and the fourth, when a man is no longer
cautious and yet not drunk. We sat in his den together; his library it
was, his sitting and his eating-room--separated by a bead curtain, so
far as the sense of sight went, from the noisome den where he plied
his trade.

He sat on a deck chair, and when he was not tapping refractory bits of
coal with them, he kept his feet--on which he wore, after the manner
of sandals, the holy relics of a pair of carpet slippers--out of the
way upon the mantel-piece, among the glass eyes. And his trousers,
by-the-by--though they have nothing to do with his triumphs--were a
most horrible yellow plaid, such as they made when our fathers wore
side-whiskers and there were crinolines in the land. Further, his hair
was black, his face rosy, and his eye a fiery brown; and his coat was
chiefly of grease upon a basis of velveteen. And his pipe had a bowl
of china showing the Graces, and his spectacles were always askew, the
left eye glaring nakedly at you, small and penetrating; the right,
seen through a glass darkly, magnified and mild. Thus his discourse
ran: "There never was a man who could stuff like me, Bellows, never. I
have stuffed elephants and I have stuffed moths, and the things have
looked all the livelier and better for it. And I have stuffed human
beings--chiefly amateur ornithologists. But I stuffed a nigger once.

"No, there is no law against it. I made him with all his fingers out
and used him as a hat-rack, but that fool Homersby got up a quarrel