Part 16

The Professor looked us over, and we in turn gazed at him with the respectful and somewhat timid interest due to his professional insight into human character and destiny. But we must confess to a distinct disappointment. We had expected to see a large and impressive personage, with the face of a seer, piercing eyes, flowing locks--also a flowing robe, covered with cabalistic signs. We had expected him to be a sort of cross between a medicine man and an ancient alchemist. Instead we saw a round-faced, plump little Irishman, with close-cropped hair, a bristling mustache, and a decided leaning towards rotundity in the abdominal profile.

"Well, young man, and what can Oi do for ye?" asked the Professor, as though we might have come to get a tooth filled, or be measured for a new pair of pants.

We explained that we had come to have our head read, with a view to finding out what business in life we were best fitted for, and also to have our "marriage adaption" explained.

Without a word the Professor sat us in a chair in the middle of the room. Still without a word he seized a pair of callipers that were unpleasantly suggestive of ice-tongs. Then in ominous silence he proceeded to pick up our head by the ends, by the sides, by the front, by the back, under the ears, and in several other painful places where heads are not usually picked up. We felt as though our head were a block of ice, which was being carried up several long flights of stairs. And each time the Professor seized it in the tongs, he carefully scrutinized the scale at the top of them. Some measurements he took several times, either to verify them, or to make it plain that he was working hard on our case.

Having finished with the callipers, he drew out a tape and measured our head in more ways than we had ever thought possible--around the rim, over the dome, back of the ears, till we must have resembled a new real-estate sub-division. Only he didn't drive in any stakes. Finally he tilted our head back as far as it would go, and very solemnly measured us over the eyes to the point of the jaw on each side. This he did four or five times, gazing sternly at the tape each time like a judge warning a backward witness.

Then he gave us the third round. He grasped our head firmly in his hands, and pressed our various bumps with fingers that seemed to be about the size and shape of chocolate-eclairs. But they were not soft. On the contrary, they were very hard indeed. Just when we felt sure that our last bump had given way under the pressure, he rocked our head violently from side to side, backwards and forwards. Reducing us to a momentary condition of coma by gouging his thumbs into us at that sensitive point where one's spinal column joins one's cerebellum--or is it one's medulla oblongata?--he seized us by the hands, each in turn, wobbled our wrists, twisted our fingers, and finally did his best to remove our thumbs completely. This, we believe, is what alienists call the "thumb test."

The Professor sat down. All this time he had preserved an absolute and ominous silence. Now he gazed at us with melancholy interest, and we nerved ourself to hear the worst. Immediately he plunged into an abyss of statistics. We can recall only a few of them, and probably these few are not altogether correct. We never were much good at arithmetic. Besides, the Professor reeled them off at breathless speed.

"The average head is twinty-wan to twinty-wan and a half inches in circumference," he roared in a voice that would easily carry a block in all directions, "and your head is twinty-three and a half. Over the dome the average head is twilve to twilve and a half inches; yours is fourteen. In len'th the average head is siven to siven and a half inches; yours is eight and a half. And your head is six and three-quarter inches woide, while the average is only foive and a half."

We asked if he had any objections to our jotting down a few of those figures. He had.

"Niver you mind, niver you mind," said the Professor impatiently, waving our question aside, "ye don't need them. You listen to me and to what Oi'm tellin' ye. It doesn't matter if ye forgit thim misurements. But here is wan Oi don't want ye to forgit. This is the most important of thim all. Oi misured ye over the oiyes to the temporo-mandible j'int. Well, the average woman misures there from tin and a half to ilivin inches; and the average man from ilivin to ilivin and a half. And many a foine, dacent, respectable man comes in to me that doesn't misure over tin and a half. But you, me young man, you misure twilve and wan-eighth inches."

The Professor leaned back to let it soak in. We gasped in delighted amazement. What do you know about that?--"twilve and wan-eighth" inches to our temporo-mandibles! Nothing cheap about our mandibles, eh, what?

"Av coorse," said the Professor deprecatingly, "Napoleon misured fourteen inches; the Duke of Wellington misured thirteen; and Timothy Eaton--gawd rest his soul!--misured twilve and three-quarters."

We were out-classed! There could be no doubt of it. But then who are we that we should compete with the great immortals, with Bonaparte and the Iron Duke and the founder of a department-store? Besides, we were in good company with our "twilve and wan-eighth." So we plucked up heart of grace and listened cheerfully to the Professor as he continued.

"You have a foine head," said he, "one of the foinest that has come to me in a year or more. But it's a head that requoires special attintion. In fact, it requoires moy thurd course, which is tin dollars. Me terms is always the same. There is no change and no reduction. It is two dollars for a plain readin', foive dollars for a chart, and foive dollars extry for me thurd course of special attintion and secret advoice. Just that, tin dollars, no more and no less!"

The Professor said it with great solemnity and impressive slowness, especially the last phrase, presumably with a view to forestalling any endeavor on our part to obtain this wonderful "thurd" course for nine dollars and a half or eight-ninety-eight. We dismissed the whole subject, and asked him what calling in life we seemed best fitted for--if any.

"Oi'm comin' to that, Oi'm comin' to it," said the Professor in a very testy tone of voice. "But furst Oi want ye to understand the advantages of havin' a chart. No man can possibly remimber all the things Oi'm goin' to tell ye, and it is quoite essintial ye should have a chart. It will be worth thousands to ye."

Suddenly we saw the reason why he had been so very peremptory in his refusal to let us take notes. He wanted to reduce us to helpless amazement by the flow of his statistics. We were amazed all right, but still firm in our resolve to spend no more than two dollars--it was all we had been able to raise at the office.

The Professor returned to that magnificent head of ours, intimating that it stood out like the rock of Gibraltar from amid the ordinary run of heads that came to him for inspection. But this did not make us so conceited as the reader might imagine. It occurred to us that the average head that comes to a phrenologist may be rather small and thick, possessors of such heads having naturally most reason to wonder what they are fitted for in life.

"You have a big head," said the Professor, "a head quoite large enough for almost anny purpose known to man. And it is a well-shaped head. Some heads that have a big dome have a depression in the top. But you've a ridge on yer skull that ye could balance a lead pencil on. That shows great stren'th of character. But you have one fault. On either soide of that ridge, where the bumps of hope ought to be, you've a hollow. Ye lack confidence in yerself. Y're nervous and diffident. And that is where moy chart would be worth untold wealth to ye. It would show ye how to develop yer hopefulness, and also yer chest--the chest havin' a great deal to do with yer hopefulness. Whoy, with a head loike yours ye could do almost annythin'!"

Instinctively, we sat very erect, feeling that the Professor was about to enter on a list of the splendid careers from which we had only to choose. We were confident that he was about to proclaim the magnificent position we would one day occupy in the literary hall of fame. After what he had said about our peerless set of protuberances, we felt that no forecast could be too rosy. So we straightened up in eager expectation.

"With a head loike yours," said the Professor in his loudest and most impressive tone, "ye'd have no difficulty in takin' a very liberal eddication if ye'd only lay yer moind to it. Ye moight roise to be a bookkeeper or a commercial thraveller. Ye moight even become a lawyer or a doctor or a professional man, if ye only had confidence in yerself. Ye could be a foine piano-player and an iligant parlor singer. Ye could also be a fluent and graceful public speaker. Ye have a good deal of real-estate ability and consid'rable speculatin' capacity and quoite a bit of organizin' talent. Ye could be a furst-rate draughtsman; and ye have a genius for inventin'. In fact, ye could be almost annythin' ye made up yer moind to be--and there ye are!"

Yes, there we were! We could take a "liberal eddication," if only--and all the time a big parchment with a huge red seal lay carefully rolled up in our trunk as evidence of our scholastic attainments! It is the only evidence we possess. We could "roise" to be a book-keeper or a commercial "thraveller"--but never a word to the effect that we might some day be able to write or might ever aspire to journalistic eminence. Not that the Professor was necessarily so far astray at that. He may have been quite right. We admit it humbly. But it was a sad blow to have such a commonplace future outlined for us, after the way he had raised our hopes. And real-estate ability!--it sounded like an attack on our moral character.

"Moreover, ye could become a foine boxer," he continued, "or a beautiful fencer. Ye have such soople movements. Ye could learn to fence in half the toime it takes an ordinary man. And a useful thing it is, too. Suppose ye were attacked on the street, fer instance."

All we would have to do in such a case, we presume, would be to draw our flashing rapier, throw ourself on guard, and "have at you, varlets!" Or perhaps the Professor intended that we should do this with our walking-stick or rolled up umbrella. Somehow the idea did not appeal much to us--spitting a man with your umbrella musses it up so dreadfully.

A bright idea suddenly occurred to us to relieve our deep dejection. Our "marriage adaptions" still remained to be explained. Timidly we broached the subject, for ours is a tender and shrinking nature, and we are not in the habit of speaking out in meeting about our dearest hopes. Our voice sank to a whisper as we asked if he thought we ought to get married.

"Would Oi advoise ye to git marrud?" roared the Professor, possibly for the benefit of some new patients who were just being let in--he had stopped to listen to the door-bell a few moments previously. "Av coorse Oi would. There are physiol'gical reasons for it. Ye know what they say, don't ye?"

Here the Professor smiled and winked in a distinctly doggish manner. We felt that he was about to say something decidedly improper in connection with those same "physiol'gical" reasons. We blushed violently.

"Ye know, they say that single min go insane much oftener than marrud min. And it is explained on physiol'gical grounds. Take the Turks, fer instance. Look at the foine, upstandin', healthy min they are, with their harems and their Circassian slaves and all the rist of it. And Oi remimber when Oi was in the heart of Africa forty years ago...."

"What part of Africa were you in?" we asked, expecting to be told that he had acted as a guide for David Livingstone.

"Oi was at Cape Town--no, no, Oi was two thousand moiles north of Cape Town, up in a country they call Nay-tawl. The whole district was filled with magnificent fellas, great, big, deep-chested, two-fisted, up-standin' six-footers, ivry wan of thim with their six or sivin woives--and divil a bit of immorality in the whole country!"

Under the circumstances we could easily believe in the high moral status of the inhabitants of Natal. But we didn't see how it helped our own particular case. Whatever may be our personal opinions on the subject of polygamy, police magistrates have been known to cherish prejudices against people who carry "physiol'gy" as far as that.

Then the Professor went back to his chart. He dragged one out of a drawer and insisted that we should gaze upon the picture of a hairless gentleman with his head neatly divided into choice building lots, each containing a little sketch suggestive of the characteristic represented by a bump at that point. For instance, in the section allotted to "amativeness"--lovely word!--there was a picture of a young man and young woman kissing. In the section labelled "combativeness" two prize-fighters faced one another; while in the "love of home" department a gentleman sat under a large stump and gazed wistfully at a barn in the distance.

We still refused to be won over, even by these allurements of graphic art. Thereupon the Professor read out several extracts of a nature to help us in the development of hopefulness and our chest.

"Ye must practice self-confidence and hopefulness," said he. "That's the only way ye can develop yer faculty of hope. And the chart shows ye how ye can do it."

Presumably the chart contained directions for fifteen-minute hoping exercises to be gone through morning and night. In the course of time, no doubt, we would develop into one of the best little hopers in town. But for the time being we were still somewhat dejected. We couldn't get our mind off those "foine, up-standin' min in Nay-tawl."

As a final inducement, the Professor took a five-cent piece out of his pocket, and bent it to show the strength of his fingers. He said he didn't do it for everyone--whether on account of the wear and tear on his fingers or on five-cent pieces, he left to the imagination. He also made us feel his biceps and watch the expansion of his chest, all acquired by carefully following out the directions on the chart--five dollars!--and also the third course and secret advice, which we would have to swear not to communicate--ten dollars!

"Oi'll tell ye the secret soign possessed by all the strongest min in the world," he assured us, "not only proize-foighters and wrastlers, but great doctors and artists as well. Oi'll tell it to ye so ye can pick thim out on the street. That's part of the secret advoice."

But we refused to rise to the bait. As a result we are still unable to tell a "wrastler" on the street from a drug-clerk, or a "proize-foighter" from a country curate.

We entrusted a two-dollar bill to the Professor's care. We thanked him for the information he had given us. Then we came sadly away, wondering vaguely how much was the fare to Nay-tawl.

Warwick Bro's & Rutter, Limited, Printers and Bookbinders, Toronto, Canada.