who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he
insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged
title-deed, a bill. But with all his failings, and the annoyances he
caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man
to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient
in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed
in a gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit
upon my chambers. Whereas with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to
keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look oily
and smell of eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy
in summer. His coats were execrable; his hat not to be handled. But
while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his
natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led
him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another
matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but with no effect.
The truth was, I suppose, that a man of so small an income, could not
afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the
same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for
red ink. One winter day I presented Turkey with a highly-respectable
looking coat of my own, a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable
warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I
thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and
obstreperousness of afternoons. But no. I verily believe that buttoning
himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect
upon him; upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for
horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his
oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a man whom
prosperity harmed.
Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I had my own
private surmises, yet touching Nippers I was well persuaded that
whatever might be his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a
temperate young man. But indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his
vintner, and at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an irritable,
brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless.
When I consider how, amid the stillness of my chambers, Nippers would
sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table,
spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk, and move it, and jerk
it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the table were a
perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him; I plainly
perceive that for Nippers, brandy and water were altogether
superfluous.
It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar
cause—indigestion—the irritability and consequent nervousness of
Nippers, were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon
he was comparatively mild. So that Turkey’s paroxysms only coming on
about twelve o’clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at
one time. Their fits relieved each other like guards. When Nippers’ was
on, Turkey’s was off; and _vice versa_. This was a good natural
...continua
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