No More Learning

"Dammit," said I, "what are you about? don't you hear? --the gentleman
says 'ahem! '" I looked sternly at my friend while I thus addressed him;
for, to say the truth, I felt particularly puzzled, and when a man is
particularly puzzled he must knit his brows and look savage, or else he
is pretty sure to look like a fool.

"Dammit," observed I--although this sounded very much like an oath, than
which nothing was further from my thoughts--"Dammit," I suggested--"the
gentleman says 'ahem! '"

I do not attempt to defend my remark on the score of profundity; I did
not think it profound myself; but I have noticed that the effect of our
speeches is not always proportionate with their importance in our own
eyes; and if I had shot Mr. D. through and through with a Paixhan bomb,
or knocked him in the head with the "Poets and Poetry of America," he
could hardly have been more discomfited than when I addressed him with
those simple words: "Dammit, what are you about? --don't you hear? --the
gentleman says 'ahem! '"

"You don't say so? " gasped he at length, after turning more colors than
a pirate runs up, one after the other, when chased by a man-of-war. "Are
you quite sure he said that? Well, at all events I am in for it now, and
may as well put a bold face upon the matter. Here goes, then--ahem!
"

At this the little old gentleman seemed pleased--God only knows why.
He left his station at the nook of the bridge, limped forward with a
gracious air, took Dammit by the hand and shook it cordially,
looking all the while straight up in his face with an air of the most
unadulterated benignity which it is possible for the mind of man to
imagine.

"I am quite sure you will win it, Dammit," said he, with the frankest of
all smiles, "but we are obliged to have a trial, you know, for the sake
of mere form. "

"Ahem! " replied my friend, taking off his coat, with a deep sigh, tying
a pocket-handkerchief around his waist, and producing an unaccountable
alteration in his countenance by twisting up his eyes and bringing down
the corners of his mouth--"ahem! " And "ahem! " said he again, after a
pause; and not another word more than "ahem! " did I ever know him to say
after that. "Aha! " thought I, without expressing myself aloud--"this is
quite a remarkable silence on the part of Toby Dammit, and is no doubt
a consequence of his verbosity upon a previous occasion. One extreme
induces another. I wonder if he has forgotten the many unanswerable
questions which he propounded to me so fluently on the day when I gave
him my last lecture? At all events, he is cured of the transcendentals. "

"Ahem! " here replied Toby, just as if he had been reading my thoughts,
and looking like a very old sheep in a revery.

The old gentleman now took him by the arm, and led him more into the
shade of the bridge--a few paces back from the turnstile.