But in chapter twelve you run him through a saw-mill by an accident, and you mention that he lost an arm there, too.

And yet in the nineteenth chapter you say, 'Adolph rushed up to Mary, threw his arms about her, and clasped her to his bosom;' and then you go on to relate how he sat down at the piano in the soft moonlight and played one of Beethoven's sonatas 'with sweet poetic fervor.' Now, the thing, you see, don't dovetail.

Adolph couldn't possibly throw his arms around Mary if one was buried in the field of battle and the other was minced up in a saw-mill, and he couldn't clasp her to his bosom unless he threw a lasso with his teeth and hauled her in by swallowing the slack of the rope.

As for the piano--well, you know as well as I do that an armless man can't play a Beethoven sonata unless he knows how to perform on the instrument with his nose, and in that case you insult the popular intelligence when you talk about 'sweet poetic fervor.' I have my fingers on the public pulse, and I know they won't stand it." "Well, well," said Stack, "I don't know how I ever came to--" "Let me direct your attention to another incendiary matter," interrupted the major.

"In the first love-scene between Adolph and--and--let me see--what's her name ?--Mary--you say that 'her liquid blue eye rested softly upon him as he poured forth the story of his love, and its azure was dimmed by a flood of happy tears.' Well, sir, about twenty pages farther on, where the villain insults her, you observe that her black eyes flashed lightning at him and seemed to scorch him where he stood.