 robust well-knit limbs. My fingers too had now got within
reach of the true, the genuine sensitive plant, which, instead of shrinking from
the touch, joys to meet it, and swells and vegetates under it: mine pleasingly
informed me that matters were so ripe for the discovery we meditated, that they
were too mighty for the confinement they were ready to break. A waistband that I
unskewer'd, and a rag of a shirt that I removed, and which could not have
cover'd a quarter of it, revealed the whole of the idiot's standard of
distinction, erect, in full pride and display: but such a one! it was positively
of so tremendous a size, that prepared as we were to see something
extraordinary, it still, out of measure, surpass'd our expectation, and
astonish'd even me, who had not been used to trade in trifles. In fine, it might
have answered very well the making a show of; its enormous head seemed, in hue
and size, not unlike a common sheep's heart; then you might have troll'd dice
securely along the broad back of the body of it; the length of it too was
prodigious; then the rich appendage of the treasure-bag beneath, large in
proportion, gather'd and crisp'd up round in shallow furrows, helped to fill the
eye, and complete the proof of his being a natural, not quite in vain; since it
was full manifest that he inherited, and largely too, the prerogative of majesty
which distinguishes that otherwise most unfortunate condition, and gives rise to
the vulgar saying »A fool's bauble is a lady's play-fellow.« Not wholly without
reason: for, generally speaking, it is in love as it is in war, where longest
weapon carries it. Nature, in short, had done so much for him in those parts,
that she perhaps held herself acquitted in doing so little for his head.
    For my part, who had sincerely no intention to push the joke further than
simply satisfying my curiosity with the sight of it alone, I was content, in
spite of the temptation that star'd me in the face, with having rais'd a Maypole
for another to hang a garland on: for, by this time, easily reading Louisa's
desires in her wishful eyes, I acted the commodious part and made her, who
sought no better sport, significant terms of encouragement to go through-stitch
with her adventure; intimating too that I would
