Page:Curiosities of Olden Times.djvu/137

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

"Flagellum Salutis"

not dispute the fact that the most useful knowledge for a lad to acquire who is destined for colonial farming, or for a mercantile life at home, is Greek prosody; but I suggest that an acquaintance with carpentering, land-surveying, or book-keeping might be found advantageous in a secondary degree.

Lockjaw is to be treated in the same manner, asserts our author, and he tells an amusing anecdote on the subject from Volquard Iversen.

Nicolas Vorburg was an Oriental traveller. In the course of his wanderings he reached Agra, the capital of the Great Cham. The European was introduced to His Majesty at the dinner-hour, and found the monarch just returned from the expedition, and as hungry as a hunter. A bowl of rice was brought in. The Great Cham dipped his hands into it, and ladled so much rice as they would hold into his capacious mouth, distended to the utmost conceivable extent. But the Great Cham had overestimated the capabilities of the distension of his jaws, and they became dislocated. At the sight, the servants were distracted with fear. The nobles stroked their chins in uncertainty how to act, the priests had recourse to their devotions, but no one assisted the monarch out of his dilemma. He sat upon his imperial throne purple in the face, his eyes distended with horror, his mouth gaping, and full of rice. Suffocation was imminent. Nicolas Vorburg, without even prostrating himself before the emperor, ran up the steps of his throne, and hit him a violent

125