There was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all?
Do you want to ruin all the furniture on the place?
Here, here, you petrified fool--" But it was no use.

Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin.
"Now what sort of a way is that to do?
First you come lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on.
And why will you?
You damage yourself as much as you do me.

You have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself--you are big enough to know better." "Well, I will not break any more furniture.

But what am I to do?
I have not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his eyes.
"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you.