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or metal did we break with our hammers.
Steel rods, loadstones, glass pipes, and bottles of various acids were
oftener before us than our meals. My uncle Hardwigg was once known to
classify six hundred different geological specimens by their weight,
hardness, fusibility, sound, taste, and smell.
He corresponded with all the great, learned, and scientific men of the
age. I was, therefore, in constant communication with, at all events the
letters of, Sir Humphry Davy, Captain Franklin, and other great men.
But before I state the subject on which my uncle wished to confer with
me, I must say a word about his personal appearance. Alas! my readers
will see a very different portrait of him at a future time, after he has
gone through the fearful adventures yet to be related.
My uncle was fifty years old; tall, thin, and wiry. Large spectacles
hid, to a certain extent, his vast, round, and goggle eyes, while his
nose was irreverently compared to a thin file. So much indeed did it
resemble that useful article, that a compass was said in his presence to
have made considerable N (Nasal) deviation.
The truth being told, however, the only article really attracted to my
uncle's nose was tobacco.
Another peculiarity of his was, that he always stepped a yard at a time,
clenched his fists as if he were going to hit you, and was, when in one
of his peculiar humors, very far from a pleasant companion.
It is further necessary to observe that he lived in a very nice house,
in that very nice street, the Konigstrasse at Hamburg. Though lying in
the centre of a town, it was perfectly rural in its aspect--half wood,
half bricks, with old-fashioned gables--one of the few old houses spared
by the great fire of 1842.
When I say a nice house, I mean a handsome house--old, tottering, and
not exactly comfortable to English notions: a house a little off the
perpendicular and inclined to fall into the neighboring canal; exactly
the house for a wandering artist to depict; all the more that you could
scarcely see it for ivy and a magnificent old tree which grew over the
door.
My uncle was rich; his house was his own property, while he had a
considerable private income. To my notion the best part of his
possessions was his god-daughter, Gretchen. And the old cook, the young
lady, the Professor and I were the sole inhabitants.
I loved mineralogy, I loved geology. To me there was nothing like
pebbles--and if my uncle had been in a little less of a fury, we should
have been the happiest of families. To prove the excellent Hardwigg's
impatience, I solemnly declare that when the flowers in the drawing-room
pots began to grow, he rose every morning at four o'clock to make them
grow quicker by pulling the leaves!
Having described my uncle, I will now give an account of our interview.
He received me in his study; a perfect museum, containing every natural
curiosity that can well be imagined--minerals, however, predominating.
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