Such is the amount of this boasted immortality. A mere
temporary rumor, a local sound; like the tone of that bell which has
just tolled among these towers, filling the ear for a moment-
lingering transiently in echo- and then passing away like a thing that
was not!
While I sat half murmuring, half meditating these unprofitable
speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the
other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the
clasps; when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or
three yawns, like one awaking from a deep sleep; then a husky hem; and
at length began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and
broken, being much troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had
woven across it; and having probably contracted a cold from long
exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short time,
however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly
fluent conversable little tome. Its language, to be sure, was rather
quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation, what, in the present
day, would be deemed barbarous; but I shall endeavor, as far as I am
able, to render it in modern parlance.
It began with railings about the neglect of the world- about merit
being suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace
topics of literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not
been opened for more than two centuries.
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