Collected Works of Poe | Page 8

Natural History. Requesting me
then to exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the
fine print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and,
opening the book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as
before.
"But for your exceeding minuteness," he said, "in describing the
monster, I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you
what it was. In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy account of
the genus Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order Lepidoptera,
of the class of Insecta -- or insects. The account runs thus:
"'Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic
appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an
elongation of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments
of mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the
superior by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club,
prismatic; abdomen pointed, The Death's -- headed Sphinx has
occasioned much terror among the vulgar, at times, by the melancholy
kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia of death which it wears
upon its corslet.'"
He here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing
himself accurately in the position which I had occupied at the moment
of beholding "the monster."
"Ah, here it is," he presently exclaimed -- "it is reascending the face of
the hill, and a very remarkable looking creature I admit it to be. Still, it
is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it, -- for the fact
is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some spider has

wrought along the window-sash, I find it to be about the sixteenth of an
inch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth of an inch
distant from the pupil of my eye."
~~~ End of Text ~~~

HOP-FROG
I NEVER knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He
seemed to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind,
and to tell it well, was the surest road to his favor. Thus it happened
that his seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as
jokers. They all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily
men, as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking,
or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I
have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean
joker is a rara avis in terris.
About the refinements, or, as he called them, the 'ghost' of wit, the king
troubled himself very little. He had an especial admiration for breadth
in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it.
Over-niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais'
'Gargantua' to the 'Zadig' of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, practical
jokes suited his taste far better than verbal ones.
At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether gone
out of fashion at court. Several of the great continental 'powers' still
retain their 'fools,' who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who were
expected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment's notice,
in consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table.
Our king, as a matter of course, retained his 'fool.' The fact is, he
required something in the way of folly -- if only to counterbalance the
heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers -- not to
mention himself.
His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. His value

was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being also a dwarf
and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days, as fools;
and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their
days (days are rather longer at court than elsewhere) without both a
jester to laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have already
observed, your jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat,
round, and unwieldy -- so that it was no small source of self-gratulation
with our king that, in Hop-Frog (this was the fool's name), he possessed
a triplicate treasure in one person.
I believe the name 'Hop-Frog' was not that given to the dwarf by his
sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent
of the several ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other
men do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of
interjectional gait -- something between a leap