"
But Aaron was a leetle staggered, notwithstanding, when I stumped towards
him, as already described, and he shifted back and back as I advanced,
with a most laughable cast of countenance, between jest and earnest,
while Fyall kept shouting to him--"If it be his ghost, try him in Latin,
Mr Bang--speak Latin to him, Aaron Bang--nothing for a ghost like Latin,
it is their mother tongue."
Bang, who, it seemed, plumed himself on his erudition, forthwith began
"Quae maribus solum tribuunter." Aaron's conceit of exorcising a spirit
with the fag--end of an old grammar rule would have tickled me under most
circumstances; but I was far past laughing. I had more need, God help
me, to pray. I made another step. He hitched his chair back. "Bam, Bo,
Rem!" shouted the incipient planting attorney. Another hitch, which
carried him clean out of the supper--room, and across the narrow piazza;
but, in this last movement, he made a regular false step, the two back
feet of his chair dropping over the first step of the front stairs,
whereupon he lost his balance, and toppling over, vanished in a
twinkling, and rolled down half--a--dozen steps, heels over head, until
he lay sprawling on the manger or mule--trough before the door, where the
Ceases are fed under busha's own eye on all estates--for this excellent
and most cogent reason, that otherwise the maize or guinea--com,
belonging of right to poor mulo, would generally go towards improving the
condition, not of the quadruped, but of the biped quashiet who had charge
of him--and there he lay in a convulsion of laughter.
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