| The chameleon in the hotel court. He is fat
and indolent and contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a
fly comes about -- reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and takes him in.
He gums his tongue first. He is always pious in his looks. And pious and
thankful both, when Providence or one of us sends him a fly. He has a froggy
head, and a back like a new grave -- for shape; and his hands like a bird's
toes that have been frost bitten. But his eyes are his exhibition feature.
A couple of skinny cones project from the sides of his head, with a wee
shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of each; and those cones turn bodily
like pivot-guns and point every-which-way, and they are independent of each
other; each has its own exclusive machinery. When I am behind him and C.
in front of him, he whirls one eye rearwards and the other forwards -- which
gives him a most Congressional expression (one eye on the constituency and
one on the swag); and then if something happens above and below him he shoots
out one eye upward like a telescope and the other downward -- and this changes
his expression, but does not improve it. - Following the Equator |
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