The Amatory Experiences of a Surgeon

HAVING finished reading Irving’s “Legend of the Arabian Astrologer,” I closed my book, and idly swinging in my hammock, was musing on those beautiful stories of the Alhambra. My mind was busy rehearsing the story just read. Before me were the two old graybeards quarreling over the rosy-checked princess; I heard the astrologer exclaim “The monarch of a mole-hill to claim sway over him who possesses the talisman of Solomon!” As he smote the earth and sank with the Gothic princess, I felt myself going down — down — when suddenly my descent ceased and my attention became fixed upon a figure which seemed to grow out of the tree, or rather the figure absorbed the whole tree. Excepting his gigantic stature, he seemed not unlike a man could look, only in place of two eyes he had one in the middle of his forehead. Observing my fright, for I am the most terrible of cowards, he smiled indulgently; still the one eye gave him such a weird aspect I could hardly keep my teeth from chattering