'One might open a vein pretty dexterously with that, Mr Chuzzlewit.'
'It has opened a good many in its time, I suppose?' said Jonas looking
at it with a growing interest.
'Not a few, my dear sir, not a few. It has been engaged in a--in a
pretty good practice, I believe I may say,' replied the doctor, coughing
as if the matter-of-fact were so very dry and literal that he couldn't
help it. 'In a pretty good practice,' repeated the doctor, putting
another glass of wine to his lips.
'Now, could you cut a man's throat with such a thing as this?' demanded
Jonas.
'Oh certainly, certainly, if you took him in the right place,' returned
the doctor. 'It all depends upon that.'
'Where you have your hand now, hey?' cried Jonas, bending forward to
look at it.
'Yes,' said the doctor; 'that's the jugular.'
Jonas, in his vivacity, made a sudden sawing in the air, so close behind
the doctor's jugular that he turned quite red. Then Jonas (in the same
strange spirit of vivacity) burst into a loud discordant laugh.
'No, no,' said the doctor, shaking his head; 'edge tools, edge tools;
never play with 'em.
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