When These Were Over The Boy Was Made To Sit
Down, And A Common Green Shade Was Bound Over His
Brow; then the
wizard took ink, and still continuing his incantations, wrote
certain mysterious figures upon the boy's palm, and
Directed him to
rivet his attention to these marks without looking aside for an
instant. Again the incantations proceeded, and after a while the
boy, being seemingly a little agitated, was asked whether he saw
anything on the palm of his hand. He declared that he saw a kind
of military procession, with flags and banners, which he described
rather minutely. I was then called upon to name the absent person
whose form was to be made visible. I named Keate. You were not at
Eton, and I must tell you, therefore, what manner of man it was
that I named, though I think you must have some idea of him
already, for wherever from utmost Canada to Bundelcund - wherever
there was the whitewashed wall of an officer's room, or of any
other apartment in which English gentlemen are forced to kick their
heels, there likely enough (in the days of his reign) the head of
Keate would be seen scratched or drawn with those various degrees
of skill which one observes in the representations of saints.
Anybody without the least notion of drawing could still draw a
speaking, nay scolding, likeness of Keate. If you had no pencil,
you could draw him well enough with a poker, or the leg of a chair,
or the smoke of a candle. He was little more (if more at all) than
five feet in height, and was not very great in girth, but in this
space was concentrated the pluck of ten battalions. He had a
really noble voice, which he could modulate with great skill, but
he had also the power of quacking like an angry duck, and he almost
always adopted this mode of communication in order to inspire
respect. He was a capital scholar, but his ingenuous learning had
NOT "softened his manners" and HAD "permitted them to be fierce" -
tremendously fierce; he had the most complete command over his
temper - I mean over his GOOD temper, which he scarcely ever allowed
to appear: you could not put him out of humour - that is, out of
the ILL-humour which he thought to be fitting for a head-master.
His red shaggy eyebrows were so prominent, that he habitually used
them as arms and hands for the purpose of pointing out any object
towards which he wished to direct attention; the rest of his
features were equally striking in their way, and were all and all
his own; he wore a fancy dress partly resembling the costume of
Napoleon, and partly that of a widow-woman. I could not by any
possibility have named anybody more decidedly differing in
appearance from the rest of the human race.
"Whom do you name?" - "I name John Keate." - "Now, what do you see?"
said the wizard to the boy.
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