The Humors of Falconbridge Part 48

"O, no; here we have another variety of hinges, steel, copper, plated, &c. These are fine for parlor doors, &c.," said the clerk.

"E' yes them air nice, I swow, mister; look like rale silver. I 'spect them cost somethin'?"

"They come rather high," said the clerk, "but we've got them as low as you can buy them in the market."

"I want to know!" quietly echoes the Yankee.

"Yes, sir; what do you wish to use them for?" says the clerk.

"Use 'em?" responded the Yankee.

"Yes; what _priced_ hinges did you require?"

"What priced hinges?--"

"Exactly! Tell me what you require them _for_, and I can soon come at the _sort_ of hinges you require," said the clerk, making an effort to come to a climax.

"Who said _I_ wanted any hinges?"

"Who said you wanted any? Why, don't you want to buy hinges?"

"Buy hinges? Why, _no;_ I don't want nothin'; _I only came in to look areound!_"

Having looked around, the imperturbable Yankee stepped out, leaving the poor clerk--quite flabbergasted!

Miseries of Bachelorhood.

Dabster says he would not mind living as a bachelor, but when he comes to think that bachelors must die--that they have got to go down to the grave "without any body to cry for them"--it gives him a chill that frost-bites his philosophy. Dabster was seen on Tuesday evening, going convoy to a milliner. Putting this fact to the other, and we think we "smell something," as the fellow said when his shirt took fire.

The Science of "Diddling."

Jeremy Diddlers have existed from time immemorial down, as traces of them are found in all ancient and modern history, from the Bible to Shakspeare, from Shakspeare to the revelations of George Gordon Byron, who strutted his brief hour, acted his part, and--vanished. Diddler is derived from the word _diddle_, to _do_--every body who has not yet made his debut to the Elephant. We believe the word has escaped the attention of the ancient lexicographers, and even Worcester, and the still more durable "Webster," have no note of the word, its derivation, or present sense.

A "Jeremy Diddler" is, in _fact_, one of your first-cla.s.s vagabonds; a fellow who has been spoiled by indulgent parents, while they were in easy circ.u.mstances. Trained up to despise labor, not capacitated by nature or inclination to pa.s.s current in a profession, he finds himself at twenty possessed of a genteel address, a respectable wardrobe, a few friends, and--no visible means of support. There are but two ways about it--take to the highway, or become a Diddler--a sponge--and, like woodc.o.c.k, live on "suction." The early part of a Diddler's life is chiefly spent among the ladies;--they being strongly susceptible of flattering attentions, especially those of "a nice young man," your Diddler lives and flourishes among them like a fighting c.o.c.k. Diddler's "heyday" being over, he next becomes a politician--an old Hunker; attends caucusses and conventions, dinners and inaugurations. Never aspiring to matrimony among the ladies, he remains an "old bach;" never hoping for office under government, he never gets any; and when, at last, both youth and energies are wasted, Diddler dons a white neckcloth, combs his few straggling hairs behind his ears, and, dressed in a well-brushed but shocking seedy suit of sable, he jines church and turns "old fogie," carries around the plate, does ch.o.r.es for the parson, becomes generally useful to the whole congregation, and finally shuffles off his mortal coil, and ends his eventful and useless life in the most becoming manner.

Cities are the only fields subservient to the successful practice of a respectable Diddler. New York affords them a very fair scope for operation, but of all the American cities, New Orleans is the Diddler's paradise! The mobile state of society, the fluctuations of men and business, the impossibility of knowing any thing or any body there for any considerable period, gives the Diddler ample scope for the exercise of his peculiar abilities to great effect. He dines almost sumptuously at the daily lunches set at the splendid drinking saloons and _cafes_, he lives for a month at a time on the various upward-bound steamboats.

In New Orleans, the departure of a steamer for St. Louis, Cincinnati or Pittsburg, is announced for such an hour "to-day"--positively; Diddler knows it's "all a gag" to get pa.s.sengers and baggage hurried on, and the steamer keeps _going_ for two to five days before she's gone; so he comes on board, registers one of his commonplace aliases, gets his state-room and board among the crowd of _real_ pa.s.sengers, up to the hour of the boat's shoving out, then he--slips ash.o.r.e, and points his boots to another boat. Many's the Diddler who's pa.s.sed a whole season thus, dead-heading it on the steamers of the Crescent City. Sometimes the Diddler learns bad habits in the South, from being a mere Diddler, which is morally bad enough; he comes in contact with professional gamblers, plunges into the most pernicious and abominable of vices--gambles, cheats, swindles, and finally, as a grand tableau to his utter d.a.m.nation here and hereafter, opens a store or a bank with a crowbar--or commits murder.

The Re-Union; Thanksgiving Story.

"Behold, for peace I had great bitterness, but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back."--Isaiah.

A portly elderly gentleman, with one hand in his breeches pocket, and the fingers of the other drumming a disconsolate rub-a-dub upon the window gla.s.s of an elegant mansion near Boston Common, is the personage I wish to call your attention to, friend reader, for the s.p.a.ce of a few moments. The facts of my story are commonplace, and thereby the more probable. The names of the dramatis personae I shall introduce, will be the _only_ part of my subject imaginary. Therefore, the above-described old gentleman, whom we found and left drumming his rub-a-dub upon the window panes, we shall call Mr. Joel Newschool. To elucidate the matter more clearly, I would beg leave to say, that Mr. Joel Newschool, though now a wealthy and retired merchant, with all the "pomp and circ.u.mstance"

of fortune around him, could--if he chose--well recollect the day when his little feet were shoeless, red and frost-bitten, as he plodded through the wheat and rye stubble of a Ma.s.sachusetts farmer, for whom he acted in early life the trifling character of a "cow boy."

Yes, Joel could remember this if he chose; but to the vain heart of a proud millionaire, such reflections seldom come to the surface. Like hundreds of other instances in the history of our countrymen, by a prolonged life of enterprise and good luck, Joel Newschool found himself, at the age of four-and-sixty, a very wealthy, if not a happy man. With his growing wealth, grew up around him a large family. Having served an apprenticeship to farming, he allowed but a brief s.p.a.ce to elapse between his freedom suit and portion, and his wedding-day. Joel and his young and fresh country spouse, with light hearts and lighter purses, came to Boston, settled, and thus we find them old and wealthy.

In the heart and manners of Mrs. Newschool, fortune made but slight alteration; but the acc.u.mulation of dollars and exalted privileges that follow wealth, had wrought many changes in the heart and feelings of her husband.

The wear of time, which is supposed to dim the eye, seemed to improve the ocular views of Joel Newschool amazingly, for he had been enabled in his late years to see that a vast difference of _caste_ existed between those that tilled the soil, wielded the sledge hammer, or drove the jack-plane, and those that were merely the idle spectators of such operations. He no longer groped in the darkness of men who believed in such fallacies as that wealth gave man no superiority over honest poverty! In short, Mr. Newschool had kept pace with all the fine notions and ostentatious feelings so peculiar to the mushroom aristocracy of the nineteenth century. He gloried in his pride, and yet felt little or none of that happiness that the bare-footed, merry cow boy enjoyed in the stubble field. But such is man.

With all his comfortable appurtenances wealth could buy and station claim, the retired merchant was not a happy man. Though his expensive carriage and liveried driver were seen to roll him regularly to the majestic church upon the Sabbath: though he was a patient listener to the ma.s.sive organ's spiritual strains and the surpliced minister's devout incantations: though he defrauded no man, defamed not his neighbor, was seeming virtuous and happy, there was at his heart a pang that turned to lees the essence of his life.

Joel Newschool had seen his two sons and three daughters, men and women around him; they all married and left his roof for their own. One, a favorite child, a daughter, a fine, well-grown girl, upon whom the father's heart had set its fondest seal--she it was that the hand of Providence ordained to humble the proud heart of the sordid millionaire.

Cecelia Newschool, actuated by the n.o.blest impulses of nature, had for her husband sought "a _man_, not a money chest," and this circ.u.mstance had made Cecelia a severed member of the Newschool family, who could not, in the refined delicacy of their senses, tolerate such palpable condescension as to acknowledge a tie that bound _them_ to the wife of a poor artizan, whatever might be his talents or integrity as a man.

Francis Fairway had made honorable appeal to the heart of Cecelia, and she repaid his pains with the full gift of a happy wife. She counted not his worldly prospects, but yielded all to his constancy. She wished for nothing but his love, and with that blessed beacon of life before her, she looked but with joy and hope to the bright side of the sunny future.

The home of the artizan was a plain, but a happy one. Loving and beloved, Cecelia scarce felt the loss of her sumptuous home and ties of kindred. But not so the proud father and the patient mother, the haughty sisters and brothers; they felt all; they attempted to conceal all, that bitterness of soul, the canker that gnaws upon the heart when we will strive to stifle the better parts of our natures.

Time pa.s.sed on; one, two, or three years, are quickly pa.s.sed and gone.

Though this little s.p.a.ce of time made little or no change in the families of the proud and indolent relatives, it brought many changes in the eventful life of the young artizan and his wife. Two sweet little babes nestled in the mother's arms, and a new and splendid invention of the poor mechanic was reaping the wonder and admiration of all Europe and America.

This was salt cast upon the affected wounds of the haughty relatives.

Now ashamed of their petty, poor, contemptible arrogance, they could not in their hearts find s.p.a.ce to welcome or partake of the proud dignity with which honorable industry had crowned the labors of the young mechanic.

It was a cold day in November; the wind was twirling and whistling through the trees on the Common; the dead leaves were dropping seared and yellow to the earth, admonishing the old gentleman whom we left drumming upon the window, that--

"_Such was life!_"

The old gentleman thumped and thumped the window pane with a dreary _sotto voce_ accompaniment for some minutes, when he was interrupted by an aged, pious-looking matron, who dropped her spectacles across the book in her lap, as she sat in her chair by the fireside, and said--

"Joel."

"Umph?" responded the old gentleman.

"The Lord has spared us to see another Thanksgiving day, should we live to see to-morrow."

"He has," responded Mr. Newschool.

"I've been thinking, Joel, that how ungrateful to G.o.d we are, for the blessings, and prosperity, and long life vouchsafed to us, by a good and benevolent Almighty."

"Rebecca," said the faltering voice of the rich man, "I know, I feel all this as sensitive as you can possibly feel it."

"I was thinking, Joel," continued the good woman, "to-morrow we shall, G.o.d permitting, be with our children and friends once again, together."

"I hope so, I trust we shall," answered the husband.