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He was seldom whistful for his lost sight, his humors being
sanguine
-- excessively so, even in his own opinion. He acquired, therefore, a fine,
spring loaded, silver lancet. His thought was that regular bleedings would
make his paunch shrink and restore spring to his step -- perhaps they might
even restore a bit of his vision. Once or twice a month he liberally dosed himself
with laudinum and bled himself with the lancet.
"Might I help ye with that?" I asked him one morning.
"Why, bless ye, my dear -- my fingers are a bit clumsy this afternoon."
He handed me the lancet.
I cocked the blade, set it over a vein in his left forearm,
and tripped the release. He was so cold with laudinum that he scarcely jerked.
I caught the blood in a copper bowl, and bound the wound. I was set to
pitch the blood out, into the street, when the memory of the fat drunken sailor
floated back to me. I went to the cupboard, took down a
bottle of rum, mixed a splash into the blood, and drank it down.
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