Razor” for she was so sharp that she knew more about other people’s
business than they knew about it themselves.
A shield with a dried salt fish painted on it flew exactly in front of the
door of a house where dwelt a man who wrote a newspaper. That was a very
poor joke perpetrated by the gale, which seemed to have forgotten that a
man who writes in a paper is not the kind of person to understand any
liberty taken with him; for he is a king in his own newspaper, and likewise
in his own opinion.
The weathercock flew to the opposite house, where he perched, looking
the picture of malice-so the neighbors said.
The cooper’s tub stuck itself up under the head of “ladies’ costumes.”
The eating-house keeper’s bill of fare, which had hung at his door in a
heavy frame, was posted by the storm over the entrance to the theatre,
where nobody went. “It was a ridiculous list-horse-radish, soup, and stuffed
cabbage.” And now people came in plenty.
The fox’s skin, the honorable sign of the furrier, was found fastened to
the bell-pull of a young man who always went to early lecture, and looked
like a furled umbrella. He said he was striving after truth, and was
considered by his aunt “a model and an example.”
The inscription “Institution for Superior Education” was found near the
billiard club, which place of resort was further adorned with the words,
“Children brought up by hand.” Now, this was not at all witty; but, you see,
the storm had done it, and no one has any control over that.
It was a terrible night, and in the morning-only think! - nearly all the
shields had changed places. In some places the inscriptions were so
malicious, that grandfather would not speak of them at all; but I saw that he
was chuckling secretly, and there may have been some inaccuracy in his
description, after all.
The poor people in the town, and still more the strangers, were
continually making mistakes in the people they wanted to see; nor was this
