The Piazza Tales | Page 9

as he was in many
ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve
o'clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature, too,
accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easily to be
matched--for these reasons, I was willing to overlook his eccentricities,
though, indeed, occasionally, I remonstrated with him. I did this very
gently, however, because, though the civilest, nay, the blandest and
most reverential of men in the morning, yet, in the afternoon, he was
disposed, upon provocation, to be slightly rash with his tongue--in fact,
insolent. Now, valuing his morning services as I did, and resolved not
to lose them--yet, at the same time, made uncomfortable by his
inflamed ways after twelve o'clock--and being a man of peace,
unwilling by my admonitions to call forth unseemly retorts from him, I
took upon me, one Saturday noon (he was always worse on Saturdays)
to hint to him, very kindly, that, perhaps, now that he was growing old,
it might be well to abridge his labors; in short, he need not come to my
chambers after twelve o'clock, but, dinner over, had best go home to his
lodgings, and rest himself till tea-time. But no; he insisted upon his
afternoon devotions. His countenance became intolerably fervid, as he
oratorically assured me--gesticulating with a long ruler at the other end
of the room--that if his services in the morning were useful, how
indispensable, then, in the afternoon?
"With submission, sir," said Turkey, on this occasion, "I consider
myself your right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy
my columns; but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and
gallantly charge the foe, thus"--and he made a violent thrust with the

ruler.
"But the blots, Turkey," intimated I.
"True; but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting old.
Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be severely
urged against gray hairs. Old age--even if it blot the page--is honorable.
With submission, sir, we both are getting old."
This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all
events, I saw that go he would not. So, I made up my mind to let him
stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it that, during the afternoon, he
had to do with my less important papers.
Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the
whole, rather piratical-looking young man, of about five and twenty. I
always deemed him the victim of two evil powers--ambition and
indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the
duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly
professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents.
The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness
and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together
over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions, hissed,
rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a
continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked.
Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get
this table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits
of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite
adjustment, by final pieces of folded blotting-paper. But no invention
would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table
lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote, there like a
man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk, then he
declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered
the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then there
was a sore aching in his back. In short, the, truth of the matter was,
Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted anything, it was to
be rid of a scrivener's table altogether. Among the manifestations of his
diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from
certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his
clients. Indeed, I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable
of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the

Justices' courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. I have
good reason to believe, however, that one individual 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