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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Kenilworth by Walter Scott: fire, that I at length discovered a small barrel of gunpowder,
carefully hid beneath the furnace, with the purpose, no doubt,
that as soon as I should commence the grand work of the
transmutation of metals, the explosion should transmute the vault
and all in it into a heap of ruins, which might serve at once for
my slaughter-house and my grave. This cured me of alchemy, and
fain would I have returned to the honest hammer and anvil; but
who would bring a horse to be shod by the Devil's post?
Meantime, I had won the regard of my honest Flibbertigibbet here,
he being then at Farringdon with his master, the sage Erasmus
Holiday, by teaching him a few secrets, such as please youth at
Kenilworth |
