"
What position was he to take up? Should he exclude the miserable joke
altogether from his amended and enlarged edition of Perrelli? He did
not feel himself justified in this line of conduct. Some future
investigator would be sure to unearth it and get the credit for his
industry. Should he re-state it in such terms as to make it palatable
to refined readers, diluting its primary pungency without impairing its
essential signification? He was disposed to adopt that course, but,
unfortunately, all attempts at verbal manipulation failed. Good scholar
as Mr. Eames was, the joke proved to be obdurate, uncompromising;
vainly he wrestled with it; try as he would, it stood out naked and
unashamed, refusing to be either cajoled or bullied into
respectability. There was no circumventing that joke, he decided.
Should he reproduce it there fore IN EXTENSO? Such, after mature
deliberation and not without certain moral misgivings, he conceived to
be his duty towards posterity. Veiled in the obscurity of a learned
tongue, the joke was surreptitiously introduced into the company of a
thousand chaste footnotes that could dispense with such covering
devices.
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