He treasured up trivial and yet insane details that had once
reminded him of the awful subconscious reality. When the don
had hung on the stone gutter, the sight of his long dangling legs,
vibrating in the void like wings, somehow awoke the naked satire
of the old definition of man as a two-legged animal without feathers.
The wretched professor had been brought into peril by his head,
which he had so elaborately cultivated, and only saved
by his legs, which he had treated with coldness and neglect.
Smith could think of no other way of announcing or recording this,
except to send a telegram to an old friend (by this time a
total stranger) to say that he had just seen a man with two legs;
and that the man was alive.
"The uprush of his released optimism burst into stars like a rocket
when he suddenly fell in love. He happened to be shooting a high
and very headlong weir in a canoe, by way of proving to himself
that he was alive; and he soon found himself involved in some doubt
about the continuance of the fact. What was worse, he found he had
equally jeopardized a harmless lady alone in a rowing-boat, and one
who had provoked death by no professions of philosophic negation.
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