"Edgar Allen Poe - The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume 4" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

the little-o box with a blindfold impetuosity -- but who shall
describe his horror when his fingers came up without the anticipated
letter in their clutch? who shall paint his astonishment and rage at
perceiving, as he rubbed his knuckles, that he had been only thumping
them to no purpose, against the bottom of an empty box. Not a single
little-o was in the little-o hole; and, glancing fearfully at the
capital-O partition, he found that to his extreme terror, in a
precisely similar predicament. Awe -- stricken, his first impulse was
to rush to the foreman.

'Sir!' said he, gasping for breath, 'I can't never set up nothing
without no o's.'

'What do you mean by that?' growled the foreman, who was in a very
ill humor at being kept so late.

'Why, sir, there beant an o in the office, neither a big un nor a
little un!'

'What -- what the d-l has become of all that were in the case?'

'I don't know, sir,' said the boy, 'but one of them ere "G'zette"
devils is bin prowling 'bout here all night, and I spect he's gone
and cabbaged 'em every one.'

'Dod rot him! I haven't a doubt of it,' replied the foreman, getting
purple with rage 'but I tell you what you do, Bob, that's a good boy
-- you go over the first chance you get and hook every one of their
i's and (d-n them!) their izzards.'

'Jist so,' replied Bob, with a wink and a frown -- 'I'll be into 'em,
I'll let 'em know a thing or two; but in de meantime, that ere
paragrab? Mus go in to-night, you know -- else there'll be the d-l to
pay, and-'

'And not a bit of pitch hot,' interrupted the foreman, with a deep
sigh, and an emphasis on the 'bit.' 'Is it a long paragraph, Bob?'

'Shouldn't call it a wery long paragrab,' said Bob.

'Ah, well, then! do the best you can with it! We must get to press,"
said the foreman, who was over head and ears in work; 'just stick in
some other letter for o; nobody's going to read the fellow's trash
anyhow.'

'Wery well,' replied Bob, 'here goes it!' and off he hurried to his
case, muttering as he went: 'Considdeble vell, them ere expressions,
perticcler for a man as doesn't swar. So I's to gouge out all their
eyes, eh? and d-n all their gizzards! Vell! this here's the chap as
is just able for to do it.' The fact is that although Bob was but