Every one has read the monograph, I believe that is the right word, of my dearfriend, Professor Higgs—Ptolemy Higgs to give him his fullname—descriptive of the tableland of Mur in North Central Africa, of theancient underground city in the mountains which surrounded it, and of thestrange tribe of Abyssinian Jews, or rather their mixed descendants, by whom itis, or was, inhabited. I say every one advisedly, for although the public whichstudies such works is usually select, that which will take an interest in them,if the character of a learned and pugnacious personage is concerned, is verywide indeed. Not to mince matters, I may as well explain what I mean at once.
Professor Higgs’s rivals and enemies, of whom either the brilliancy ofhis achievements or his somewhat abrupt and pointed methods of controversy seemto have made him a great many, have risen up, or rather seated themselves, andwritten him down—well, an individual who strains the truth. Indeed, onlythis morning one of these inquired, in a letter to the press, alluding to someadventurous traveller who, I am told, lectured to the British Associationseveral years ago, whether Professor Higgs did not, in fact, ride across thedesert to Mur, not upon a camel, as he alleged, but upon a land tortoise ofextraordinary size.
The innuendo contained in this epistle has made the Professor, who, as I havealready hinted, is not by nature of a meek disposition, extremely angry.Indeed, notwithstanding all that I could do, he left his London house under anhour ago with a whip of hippopotamus hide such as the Egyptians call akoorbash, purposing to ave