Pipes OPan at Zekesbury | Page 2

however meager my outline of them may
prove, my material for the sketch is most accurate in every detail, and
no deviation from the cold facts of the case shall influence any line of
my report.
For some years prior to this odd experience I had been connected with a
daily paper at the state capitol; and latterly a prolonged session of the
legislature, where I specially reported, having told threateningly upon
my health, I took both the advantage of a brief vacation, and the
invitation of a young bachelor Senator, to get out of the city for awhile,
and bask my respiratory organs in the revivifying rural air of
Zekesbury--the home of my new friend.
"It'll pay you to get out here," he said, cordially, meeting me at the little
station, "and I'm glad you've come, for you'll find no end of odd
characters to amuse you." And under the very pleasant sponsorship of
my senatorial friend, I was placed at once on genial terms with half the
citizens of the little town--from the shirt-sleeved nabob of the county
office to the droll wag of the favorite loafing-place--the rules and
by-laws of which resort, by the way, being rudely charcoaled on the
wall above the cutter's bench, and somewhat artistically culminating in
an original dialectic legend which ran thus:
F'rinstance, now whar some folks gits
To relyin' on their wits.
Ten
to one they git too smart,
And spile it all right at the start!--
Feller
wants to jest go slow
And do his thinkin' first, you know:----
Ef I

can't think up somepin' good,
I set still and chaw my cood!
And it was at this inviting rendezvous, two or three evenings following
my arrival, that the general crowd, acting upon the random proposition
of one of the boys, rose as a man and wended its hilarious way to the
town hall.
"Phrenology," said the little, old, bald-headed lecturer and mesmerist,
thumbing the egg-shaped head of a young man I remembered to have
met that afternoon in some law office; "Phrenology," repeated the
professor--"or rather the term phrenology--is derived from two Greek
words signifying mind_ and _discourse; hence we find embodied in
phrenology-proper, the science of intellectual measurement, together
with the capacity of intelligent communication of the varying mental
forces and their flexibilities, etc., &c. The study, then, of phrenology is,
to wholly simplify it--is, I say, the general contemplation of the
workings of the mind as made manifest through the certain
corresponding depressions and protuberances of the human skull, when,
of course, in a healthy state of action and development, as we here find
the conditions exemplified in the subject before us."
Here the "subject" vaguely smiled.
"You recognize that mug, don't you?" whispered my friend. "It's that
coruscating young ass, you know, Hedrick--in Cummings'
office--trying to study law and literature at the same time, and
tampering with 'The Monster that Annually,' don't you know?--where
we found the two young students scuffling round the office, and
smelling of
peppermint?--Hedrick, you know, and Sweeney. Sweeney,
the slim chap, with the pallid face, and frog-eyes, and clammy hands!
You remember I told you 'there was a pair of 'em?' Well, they're up to
something here to-night. Hedrick, there on the stage in front; and
Sweeney--don't you see?--with the gang on the rear seats."
"Phrenology--again," continued the lecturer, "is, we may say, a species
of mental geography, as it were; which--by a study of the skull--leads
also to a study of the brain within, even as geology naturally follows

the initial contemplation of the earth's surface. The brain, thurfur, or
intellectual retort, as we may say, natively exerts a molding influence
on the skull contour; thurfur is the expert in phrenology most readily
enabled to accurately locate the multitudinous intellectual forces, and
most exactingly estimate, as well, the sequent character of each subject
submitted to his scrutiny. As, in the example before us--a young man,
doubtless well known in your midst, though, I may say, an entire
stranger to myself--I venture to disclose some characteristic trends and
tendencies, as indicated by this phrenological depression and
development of the skull-proper, as later we will show, through the
mesmeric condition, the accuracy of our mental diagnosis."
Throughout the latter part of this speech my friend nudged me
spasmodically, whispering something which was jostled out of
intelligent utterance by some inward spasm of laughter.
"In this head," said the Professor, straddling his malleable fingers
across the young man's bumpy brow--"In this head we find Ideality
large--abnormally large, in fact; thurby indicating--taken in conjunction
with a like development of the perceptive
qualities--language
following, as well, in the prominent eye--thurby indicating, I say, our
subject as especially endowed with a love for the beautiful--the
sublime--the elevating--the refined and
delicate--the lofty and
superb--in nature, and in all the sublimated attributes of the human
heart and beatific soul. In