Harrington's peace of mind. But when it comes
to the dust on the gilt tops of my red-buckrammed Moliere she fears
infection.
And yet Harrington is a man of exceptional intelligence. He would agree
with me that infection from book-dust is not an ignoble form of death. I
sit there and plot obituaries. "Mr. H. Wellington Jones," says the
_Evening Star_, "died yesterday afternoon from ptomaine poisoning, after
a very brief illness. Friday night he was with a merry group of diners
in one of our best-known and most brilliantly lighted Broadway
restaurants. He partook heartily of lobster salad, of which, his closest
friends declare, he was inordinately fond. Almost immediately he
complained of being ill and was taken home in a taxicab." If I were H.
Wellington Jones and it were my fate to die of poison I could frame a
nobler end for myself. "Mr. H. Wellington Jones," I would have it read,
"died yesterday of some mysterious form of bacterial poisoning
contracted while turning over the pages of an old family Bible which he
was accustomed to consult at frequent intervals. Mr. Smith had a cut
finger which was not quite healed and it is supposed that a dust-speck
from the pages of the old book must have entered the wound and induced
sepsis.
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