Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (13 page)

Now when the tiger sobbed and sighed and wept and swore, the pious Brahman's heart softened, and at last he consented to open the door of the cage. Out popped the tiger, and, seizing the poor man, cried, “What a fool you are! What is to prevent my eating you now, for after being cooped up so long I am just terribly hungry!”

In vain the Brahman pled for his life; the most he could gain was a promise by the tiger to abide by the decision of the first three things he chose to question as to the justice of the tiger's action.

So the Brahman first asked a pipal tree what it thought of the matter, but the pipal tree replied coldly, “What have you to complain about? Don't I give shade and shelter to everyone who passes by, and don't they in return tear down my branches to feed their cattle? Don't whimper—be a man!”

Then the Brahman, sad at heart, went farther afield until he saw a buffalo turning a well wheel; but he fared no better from it, for it answered, “You are a fool to expect gratitude.
Look at me. While I gave milk they fed me on cotton seed and oil cake, but now that I am dry they yoke me here, and give me refuse as fodder!”

The Brahman, sadder still, asked the road to give him its opinion.

“My dear sir,” said the road, “how foolish you are to expect anything else. Here am I, useful to everybody, yet all, rich and poor, great and small, trample on me as they go past, giving me nothing but the ashes of their pipes and the husks of their grain!”

On this the Brahman turned back sorrowfully, and on the way he met a jackal, who called out, “Why, what's the matter, Mr. Brahman? You look as miserable as a fish out of water!”

The Brahman told him all that had occurred. “How very confusing!” said the jackal, when the recital was ended; “would you mind telling me over again, for everything has got so mixed up?”

The Brahman told it all over again, but the jackal shook his head in a distracted sort of way, and still could not understand.

“It's very odd,” said he, sadly, “but it all seems to go in at one ear and out at the other! I will go to the place where it all happened, and then perhaps I shall be able to give a judgment.”

So they returned to the cage, by which the tiger was waiting for the Brahman, and sharpening his teeth and claws.

“You've been away a long time!” growled the savage beast, “but now let us begin our dinner.”

“Our
dinner
!” thought the wretched Brahman, as his knees knocked together with fright. “
What a remarkably delicate way of putting it
!”

“Give me five minutes, my lord!” he pleaded, “in order that I may explain matters to the jackal here, who is somewhat slow in his wits.”

The tiger consented, and the Brahman began the whole story over again, not missing a single detail, and spinning as long a yarn as possible.

“Oh, my poor brain! Oh, my poor brain!” cried the jackal, wringing its paws. “Let me see! How did it all begin? You were in the cage, and the tiger came walking by—”

“Pooh!” interrupted the tiger, “What a fool you are!
I
was in the cage.”

“Of course!” cried the jackal, pretending to tremble with
fright. “Yes, I was in the cage—no I wasn't—dear, dear, where are my wits? Let me see—the tiger was in the Brahman, and the cage came walking by—no, that's not it, either! Well, don't mind me, but begin your dinner, for I shall never understand!”

“Yes, you shall!” returned the tiger, in a rage at the jackal's stupidity; “I'll
make
you understand! Look here—I am the tiger…”

“Yes, my lord!”

“And that is the Brahman…”

“Yes, my lord!”

“And that is the cage…”

“Yes, my lord!”

“And I was in the cage—do you understand?”

“Yes—no—please, my lord…”

“Well?” cried the tiger impatiently.

“Please, my lord I—how did you get in?”

“How I—why in the usual way, of course!”

“Oh, dear me!—my head is beginning to whirl again! Please don't be angry, my lord, but what is the usual way?”

At this the tiger lost patience and, jumping into the cage, cried, “This way! Now do you understand how it was?”

“Perfectly!” grinned the jackal, as he dexterously shut the door, “and if you will permit me to say so, I think matters will remain as they were.”

• In 1992, 29,000 rubber ducks and other bath toys fell into the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a shipping accident. Eleven months later, the toys started washing up along the North American seaboard. Scientists used the duckies to help them study ocean currents.

• What's the botanical difference between green peppers, yellow peppers, and red peppers? There is none—the only difference is their age. They start out green, then turn yellow, then red, then purple, then brown. And as they mature, they get progressively sweeter (until they spoil).

• After Congress reduced the postage rate from 5¢ to 3¢ in 1851, a 3¢ piece was minted to make it easier to buy stamps.

Next time you feel yourself coming down with a cold, thank your lucky stars for 21st-century medicine.

On the morning of February 2, 1685, King Charles II of England was preparing to shave when he suddenly cried out in pain, fell to the floor, and started having fits. Six royal physicians rushed in and administered emergency “aid.”

• They let (drained) 16 ounces of blood.

• Then they applied heated cups to the skin, which formed large round blisters, in order to “stimulate the system.”

• They let 8 more ounces of blood.

• They induced vomiting to purify his stomach, gave an enema to purify his bowels, and made him swallow a purgative to clean out his intestines.

• Then they force-fed him syrup of blackthorn and rock salt.

• They shaved his hair and put blistering plasters on his scalp. The king regained consciousness. The treatment seemed to be working, so they kept at it.

• They gave him another enema.

• Then they applied hellebore root to the nostrils, more blistering plasters to the skin, and powdered cowslip flowers to the stomach.

• Special plasters made from pigeon droppings were attached to his feet. After 12 hours of care, they put the ailing king to bed.

• Charles awoke and seemed much improved. The attending physicians congratulated themselves and continued the treatment.

• They let 10 more ounces of blood.

• They gave him a potion of black cherry, peony, lavender, crushed pearls, and sugar. Charles slept for the rest of the day and throughout the night.

• He awoke, had another fit, and was bled again.

• They gave him senna pods in spring water, and white wine with nutmeg.

• They force-fed him a drink made from “40 drops of extract of human skull” of a man who had met a violent death.

• They made him eat a gallstone from an East Indian goat.

• Then they proudly announced that King Charles was definitely on the road to recovery.

• The king was near death.

• He was blistered again, re-bled, repurged, and given another enema.

• He was given Jesuits' powder—a controversial malaria remedy—laced with opium and wine. His doctors were mystified by the king's weakening condition.

• Showing no improvement, the king was bled almost bloodless.

• They scoured the palace grounds and created a last-ditch antidote containing “extracts of all the herbs and animals of the kingdom.”

The king was dead.

Postmortem:
It was rumored at the time that King Charles II had been poisoned, but no proof was ever found. Modern doctors offer three theories as to cause of death:

1.
He
was
poisoned—but not by an enemy—by himself. He often played with chemicals in an unventilated palace laboratory, where he contracted acute mercury poisoning.

2.
He suffered from kidney failure.

3.
He had a brain hemorrhage.

Would the king have survived without treatment? Probably not. But at least his death wouldn't have been so excruciating.

The Oscars and the Grammys are all right. But we at the BRI have always been fascinated by things that are so bad they're good. Here's the story behind one of our favorite awards, the Bulwer-Lytton.

The line has been plagiarized and satirized by a multitude of writers. Sometime in the 1970s, a graduate student named Scott Rice set out to find its origin and discovered it was the opening line of the 1830 novel
Paul Clifford
by English author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Years later, while working as an English professor at San Jose State University, Rice served as a judge in numerous writing contests. Impressed by the high quantity of bad writing he saw, in 1982 Rice decided to run his own contest. His unusual literary challenge: compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. This “whimsical competition” soon turned into a formal contest, which Rice named for the master of longwindedness: the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Today the contest attracts thousands of entries from all over the world. The rules are simple: the entry can only be a single sentence. It may be of any length, but all entries must be original and previously unpublished. Here are some of the winners from the past 20 years.

• As the fading light of a dying day
filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway.

—Larry Brill, Austin, Texas (1994 winner)

• She wasn't really my type,
a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming “The Twelfth of Never,” I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth.

—William W. Ocheltree, Port Townsend, Washington (1993 winner)

• The bone-chilling scream split
the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.