Read The Poor Mouth for Free Online

utricle and the three cristae of the semi-circular canals. In the otolith organs the hair-like protruberances are embedded in a gelatinous mess containing calcium carbonate. The purpose of this grandiose apparatus, so far as homo sapiens is concerned, is the achievement of remaining in an upright posture, one most desirable in the case of a performer on the high wire who is aloft and far from the ground.

    I found that conscientiously reading that sort of material required considerable concentration. I do not know what it means and I have no doubt whatever that the brother’s ‘clients’ will not know either.
    The actual instructions as to wire-walking were straightforward enough. Perhaps it was the brother’s own experience (for he was undoubtedly Professor Latimer Dodds) which made him advise a bedroom as the scene of opening practices. The wire was to be slung about a foot from the floor between two beds very heavily weighted ‘with bags of cement, stone, metal safes or other ponderous objects’. When the neophyte wire-walker was ready to begin practice, the massive bedsteads were to be dragged apart by ‘friends’, so that the necessary tension of the wire would be established and maintained. ‘If it happens that the weight on a bed turns out to be insufficient to support the weight of the performer on the wire, the friends should sit or lie on the bed.’ Afterwards practice was transferred to ‘the orchard’ where two stout adjacent fruit trees were to be the anchors of the wire, the elevation of which was to be gradually increased. The necessity for daily practice was emphasized and (barring accidents) a good result was promised in three months. A certain dietetic regimen was prescribed, with total prohibition of alcohol and tobacco, and it was added that even if the student proved absolutely hopeless in all attempts at wire-walking, he would in any event feel immensely improved in health and spirits at the end of that three months.
    I hastily put the treatise in my pocket as I heard the steps of Mr Collopy coming in the side-door. He hung his coat up on the back of the door and sat down at the range.
    –A man didn’t call about the sewers? he asked.
    –The sewers? I don’t think so.
    –Ah well, please God he’ll be here tomorrow. He’s going to lay a new connection in the yard, never mind why. He is a decent man by the name of Corless, a great handball player in his day. Where’s that brother of yours?
    –Upstairs.
    –Upstairs, faith! What is he doing upstairs? Is he in bed?
    –No. I think he’s writing.
    –Writing? Well, well. Island of Saints and Scholars. Upstairs writing and burning the gas. Tell him to come down here if he wants to write.
    Annie came out of the back room.
    –Mrs Grotty would like to see you, Father.
    –Oh, certainly.
    I went upstairs to warn the brother. He nodded grimly and stuffed a great wad of stamped envelopes, ready for the post, under his coat. Then he put out the gas.

7
    M ANY months had passed and the situation in our kitchen was as many a time before: myself and the brother were at the table weaving the web of scholarship while Mr Collopy and Father Fahrt were resting themselves at the range with the crock, tumblers and a jug of water between them.
    The plumber Corless had long ago come and gone, ripping up the back yard and carrying out various mysterious works, not only there but in Mrs Crotty’s bedroom. Sundry lengths of timber had been delivered for Mr Collopy himself and, since these things went on mostly while the brother and I were at school, we were told by Annie that the hammering and constructional bedlam to be heard from the sick woman’s room were Very sore on the nerves’. It was a point of apathy, or tact, or safety-first with the brother and myself to ask no questions as to what was afoot or evince any curiosity. ‘They might only be making a coffin,’ the brother said to me, ‘and of course that’s a very religious business. People can