keep his ground, retreated into the shop, still facing Merton, who
kept advancing upon him as he receded. Back, step by step, went
Hookey; forward, step by step, came Merton; each all the while eyeing
the other with equal astonishment. The barber continued retreating,
the other following him,--first through the shop, then through the
kitchen, then through the parlour--the three apartments leading into
one another. At last he got to the remotest corner of the parlour, and
could get no farther. Here he paused, and Merton paused also. Still
they gazed on each other,--the barber in the corner overpowered with
amazement, and the student standing before him hardly less surprised.
At last Merton broke silence in the following awful words,--"GRACIOUS
HEAVENS WHAT A NOSE!" So saying, he retreated as slowly as he entered,
leaving Mr. Hookey utterly stupified and bewildered. The sentence went
like iron into the barber's soul; he felt it in all its bitterness.

It is almost unnecessary to say what an effect this scene had upon the
highly-susceptible temperament of Merton. From that moment peace fled
his mind. He went instantly home; but instead of devoting himself, as
before, to those studies in which he delighted, and in which he was
wont so highly to excel, he immured himself in his chamber, giving way
to gloomy abstraction, and agonizing his spirit with painful and most
distressing fancies. The great power of his imagination caused him,
in a peculiar manner, to suffer from the remembrance of what he had
witnessed; and, accordingly, his waking as well as his sleeping hours
were haunted with visions of noses,--noses of stupendous size, which
arose, like ocean islands, amid the gloomy tabernacle of his brain,
and filled him with utter despair. At last, from bad to worse, he
became the mere shadow of his former self, the wreck of what he
was, and a picture of fallen and shattered genius. To drive away
the hideous phantasmagorias that tortured him, as with the stings of