Jellylike

1895, Mark Twain, “How to Tell a Story,” in Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches, edited by Tom Quirk, Penguin, 1994, originally published in The Youth’s Companion, 3 October, 1895, The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces.

However quickly the water was used, there were always larvae of some sort on its surface, jumpy jellylike whiskery things, perfection in their way.