Tavernful

Why not give the proof? But not like Professor Patterson, of Philadelphia, who said: “Hahnemann contradicts Euclid’s axiom, ‘the whole is greater than the part,’ because he insists that parts are more than the whole;” and his class laughed at this like a tavernful of voters at a pettifogger’s jest.

One night after having astonished a tavernful with his drinking powers he came upon a watchman peacefully slumbering in his box, and threw box and man over the wall of a burial ground.

Humming the popular ballad we all had on the brain that winter (‘Tragic Johanna’, about a lass who took her broken heart to the banks of the Gudenæn: ‘deeper than Love ran that river, & deeper than Love did she drown’ – O, how little Johanna could set whole tavernfuls of grown men blubbing!), Herr Møller selected a loaf for me – not quite the best, I noted, but not the worst either, & wrapped it in a page of Berlingske Tidene.

Later in the same act, references to war-activities, ‘documentary’ contributions, as it were, like radio talks on civil defence in the Second World War, are more business-like means than a tavernful of assorted accents of attracting interest and conveying practical suggestions.