Excerpt from In the Midst of Alarms: A Novel All this was very strange to the professor, and he felt himself in a new world, with whose customs he was not familiar. Nobody paid the slightest attention to him as he stood there amongst it all, with his satchel in his hand. AS he timidly edged up to the counter, and tried to accumulate courage enough to address the clerk, a young man came for ward, flung his handbag on the polished top of the counter, metaphorically brushed the professor aside, pulled the bulky register towards him, and inscribed his name on the page, with a rapidity equalled only by the illegibility of the result. Hello, Sam, he said to the clerk. How's things? Get my telegram? Yes, answered the clerk but I can't give you 27. It's been taken for a week. I reserved 85 for you, and had to hold on with my teeth to do that. The reply of the young man was merely a brief mention of the place of torment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.