 | CHAPTER XII.
A FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE WITH FOB, THE TAILOR. The career of Puffer Hopkins |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
A FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE WITH FOB, THE TAILOR.
It was in the peak of the Fork, even higher up than
Puffer Hopkins, that Fob the tailor lodged, and there
Puffer, ascending by ladder steps, one pleasant morning
about this time, found him nestling like a barn-swallow,
under the eaves, with his legs gathered under him, after
the immemorial fashion of the craft.
The room which was occupied by Fob, was scarcely
more than an angle in the roof: the ceiling was formed
by the slope of the house-top, and it was lighted by a
small dormer window which bulged out of the roof like
an eye, and, being the only dormer in the neighborhood,
stared boldly down into the yards and alleys adjacent.
It enjoyed the further privilege, from its great elevation,
of peering off beyond the river, into a pleasant country
prospect, in the suburbs of Williamsburgh, and furnished
many cheerful rural images to any one that looked forth.
Besides this paramount advantage of the dormer, there
was within the apartment, a pair of glass bottles on a
at the top; a chain of birds' eggs hung against the wall
over the shelf; an old fashioned clothes-press, very much
broken up and debilitated, at the foot of a dwarf truckle-bed:
parts of old spinning wheels, rusty stirrups and sur-cingles,
the back of a mouldy and moth-eaten saddle, and other
ancient trumpery in a corner, and suspended at the window,
overlooking a pot of plants, a cage with a black-bird
in it, busily engaged in passing up and down from
a second-story perch to the ground-floor of his tenement.
Although Puffer had many times before visited the
lodgings of the little tailor, he had not failed, each time,
to express, by his manner at least, a degree of surprise
and bewilderment at the peculiar appointments and furniture
of the apartment. To come up out of the noisy
and brawling street, where every thing was so harsh and
city-like, into a little region, where every thing was
quietly contrived to call up remote places, with the
thought of a life so different, so simple and pastoral,
compared with the dull tumult below, was like magic,
or playhouse jugglery; and such a feeling betrayed itself
in the countenance of Puffer Hopkins.
“You wonder I doubt not, to see this black-bird here—
don't you?” said the tailor, detecting the question which
Puffer's looks had often asked before: “What business
have I with a black-bird, unless I might fancy that I
could catch the cut of a parson's coat from the fashion
of his deep sable feathers. That blackbird, sir, is to me
and my opinions, what the best and portliest member of
Congress is to the mind of this metropolis. He has
come a great way out of the country, from the very fields
where I was born, and where my childhood frolicked,
to remind me of the happy hours I have passed, and the
sweet dreams I have dreamt, in the very meadows where
he and his brethren chattered on the dry branches of the
chestnut tree. He stands to me for those fields and all
those hours and occasions of the past. I am a fool for being
so easily purchased to pleasure: and so I am!”
Puffer had indicated by the attentive ear and glistening
eyes with which he had regarded his poor neighbor,
that, although a politician and crowd-hunter, he had yet
something in his heart that answered these conceits of the
fancy-stricken tailor.
“This pot too, of worthless flowers,” continued Fob,
“my neighbors every morning and evening, see me water
them, and wonder how I can so waste my time. They
see in it nothing but a few coarse weeds in a cheap
earthen pot. I, and thank God for it, recognize in it
the great, green wood where summer and I haunted when
we were young, together. I hear in every breath that stirs
them, the rustling of the noon-day wind, as it spake to
me long ago, in a quiet nook of the old ancestral woodside;
and the pattering of the rain on their leaves renews
the sound of that ancient brook, whose voice was like a
prophet's, to cheer and encourage all that green region
in its growth. From its banks these flowers were plucked
and brought into this heart of humanity, to give me a
thought at times of the good childhood that was buried
by me long ago where they had their birth.”
Puffer still listened and said not a word.
“Oh how many delicious discoveries in the tall grass:
how many stealthy approaches; how many swayings in
perilous branches and mad antics in tree tops; how many
boisterous pursuits of the young bird and lucky arrests of
winged fugitives, resound and come back and repeat themselves
in this speckled string of birds' eggs hanging against
the dingy wall!”
As he spake, the large black eyes of the tailor grew
more lustrous, and still the more from the tears which
stole out and back again with the emotions that stirred him.
Fob had scarcely finished his earnest declamation, when
they heard creaking steps upon the stair, and in a minute
or two while they listened, the door was thrust open, and
a person of no little consequence, if his own countenance
was to be taken as a commentary on his pretensions,
came forward. He was a fine, sleek, well-fed gentleman, of
a good middle stature, apparelled as daintily and cleanly
as one could wish; and judging by his jet black hair
and whiskers which shone again with oil or some other
ointment; his shapely and well-cut coat which sat to his
back like a supplementary skin; his pantaloons so straight
and trim that the legs must needs move rectilinearly or
not at all; his hat with its smooth, glossy nap; his boots
quite as polished and serenely bright; and the massy
gold chain that stretched like an arc of promise over the
azure heaven of a deep blue vest: judging, we say, by
of all the guilds and craftsmen, whose business it is
to prepare a gentleman for a promenade.
“Are those pants finished, Fob: I mean the superior,
with open fronts and patent straps?” said the sleek visiter,
swelling as he spake and staring over the little tailor's
head very fiercely, as if he meditated boring a couple of
holes in the wall beyond with his glances. “Curse it,
sir, my boy sate up in the ware-house 'till midnight, expecting
you every moment. What do you think I'm
made of,” he continued, dashing his elegant heel on the
floor, “cast-iron or New Hampshire granite? Eh?”
“I worked, sir,” answered Fob, looking up timidly into
the face of the sleek gentleman “'till my needle grew
so fine I could'nt see it: and by the time I had got down
the right leg, the moon was set; my candles all burnt
out, and I fell back on my lap-board, sir, and slept 'till
dawn, when I took up my last stitch with the rise of the
sun. You shall have them by three this afternoon, if
you'll be good enough to wait.”
“Rot your slow fingers—do you call that work?” pursued
the visiter. “Get in a new supply of lights, and
keep it up all night—your wages would bear it. Here am
I paying you at the extravagant rate of nine-pence an
hour for your labor, and you grumble—do you?”
“I do not, sir,” said Fob meekly, “I am satisfied, perfectly
satisfied. I'm bound to make clothes for gentlemen,
and it pleases me to see gentlemen wear them, if they suit.”
“Do you know, Fob, that it's my private opinion,”
continued the sleek visiter, “my private opinion, if you
had fallen a corpse on that board and had never got up
again—it would have done you great honor.”
Fob assumed a puzzled look at this, as if he did'nt exactly
fathom and comprehend how that could be.
“I should like to know,” resumed the well-apparelled
visiter, “whether it is'nt as creditable to a man to lose
his life on a pair of patent-strapped, open-fronted pantaloons,
as in a ditch with a ball in his head, or a great
bagnet in his belly—tell me that, will you? If some man,
you for instance, would only make a martyr of himself,
in getting up a new-fangled coat, or a vest extraordinary,
the craft of clothiers would make a saint of him: overwork
yourself, Fob, and be found by a coroner's quest
bury you at my own expense! 'Gad I will—and that as
soon as you choose!”
To this pleasant proposition Fob made no answer, but
smiled doubtfully and glanced up at his bird in the cage,
thinking perhaps he'd rather be black and idle, and in
prison like him, than a feeble-bodied tailor, working for
journeyman's wages, with a delightful circle of calling
acquaintance, like the gentleman there present, among
Broadway masters and down-town clothing merchants.
“Never mind that now,” said the master, “you may
think of it. Don't fail to run down at three with the
pants on your arm: mark me now Fob,” and he shook his
finger as he turned for the door. “I've got a wedding coat
to give out to you, to be ready for Monday evening, so
there may be a little light Sunday work for you. You
need'nt put any button-holes in the coat-tails as you did
once before, if you please. The blunder did'nt take with
the fashionables, although it was quite original and fresh.
Down by three, or I cut you off from our shop!”
With this solemn admonition and menace, the high and
mighty master-tailor from Broadway descended the narrow
steps with great caution, and getting once again into the
free and open street, and on a good level pavement,
launched out into some of his finest paces, at which he
was soon so well pleased as to begin smiling to himself,
and kept on in both recreations, smiling and launching out,
until he reached his shop-door, where he entered majestically
in.
After the Broadway master had departed, Fob laid
aside his implements and the garment he was busy on,
and getting down from his lap-board walked to the window,
where he stood gazing earnestly out, beyond the
river, for several minutes.
“I am sometimes surprised,” he at length said, returning
and taking a seat on the corner of his board, while a
little globule, that wonderfully resembled a tear, stood in
the corner of his eye, “I am sometimes surprised,” said
he, “at the passionate fondness with which my mind
dwells on the country. But it has always been so. When
I was a mere child, and my father lived then in the city,
how I used to yearn after a sight of the green fields. I
watched the months as they waned away, with one hope,
me with its holiday coach away to the dusty turnpike,
the long green lane, and the low roof of the Homestead.
At school I bent over my desk, and folding my hands upon
my eyes to help the labor of fancy, would strive with
all my might to call up vividly some little scene or spot
that I loved or preferred to others. When the world was
rough with me, even at that early time, I would hie
away in thought to the side of a shady pool that I
knew of, and quench my thirst and drown my troubles in
waters, purer and more limpid, as it seemed to me, than
any other that ever flowed or bubbled up from the earth.”
In explanation of the character of his poor neighbor,
Puffer afterwards learned, that the homestead of Fob's
ancestors, for poor and wretched as he now seemed, the
fanciful tailor once had ancestors—the homestead which
Fob loved next after his own soul, every rood of which
was fairy ground to his memory, peopled with lovely
shapes, having power to stir the fountain of tears, every
nook and angle associated in his fancy with precious
hours long passed away; that this dear homestead had
been wrested out of the hands of its rightful heritors, and
was, by law and custom, a forbidden realm to him. In
spite of this, it was Fob's wont to visit it secretly every
year, at mid-summer, to wander silently about its familiar
fields and dusky woods, and returning when he had
gathered a store of pleasnat thoughts and fancies to last
him a twelvemonth, to bring back such memorials and
relics—like those that garnished his garret—as would
suggest to his mind the kindliest recollections of his favorite
haunts.
“Among many images which perpetually come into
my mind associated with that old past time,” resumed the
little tailor, after a pause, “there is one more distinct,
more fixed and impressive than any other. I know not
why, nor do I know how it should occur to me so forcibly
now that you are here. There was a strange old man
who many years ago was a wanderer along the Scarsdale
road—they said he had spent his school holidays some
where there—I marked him and loved him for that—and
whose wild actions were a constant theme at half the
country fire-sides. I saw him once—at midnight, or very
near that time—upon the shore of the Sound, where I had
myself: He had cast off his hat and stood facing the
water with his hair streaming wildly back, and his eyes
gleaming forth upon the wave, with all the splendor of
madness. He cried aloud as if in discourse with the billows.
`Has't any thing to lend to-day? I must have
money—disgorge, or I shall starve—my wife is hungry—
my boy cries for bread. Foam will not feed him—nor
will these loud-sounding rebuffs of yours! Wave on
wave—cent per cent—how they jump, and frolic, and
climb each other at a compound pace. Oh what a ledger
of interest must there be on the other shore, when we
reach it. God's there, keeping count!—Mark that.'
The Sound was in a stormy state; a ship was passing
that wrestled fiercely with the billows that tumbled
against her sides, and rushed in the way of her prow,
and kept her in a perplexing grasp, struggling in
vain to get free. The old man caught sight of this.
`Dash and howl, and drag her down, will you?'
he shouted, `That's the true death-grapple, and old ship
you must yield. See, she shivers against the rock and
down she pitches,' at this the vessel struck a bulging crag,
and was in a moment broken into a thousand fragments.
`Pull her in pieces, joint by joint, and make shreds of
her, as I do of this—yes, this cursed scroll that the old
engulphing miser gapes for in the city! So—so, thus!'
Saying this he snatched from his breast what seemed a
large square of parchment and tearing it into tatters, scattered
it with the wind, along the beach!”
“What became of the fragments—were they never
gathered?” asked Puffer Hopkins.
“They were—and by me,” answered Fob.
“And where are they now?”
“The Lord, that hath a record of all things lost, only
knows!” he answered. “I collected them, patched them
together, and after passing from hand to hand, without
much advantage to any, they were thrown into some old
trunk or garret, where doubtless, they are mouldering now
—and in all human chances, passing through the same
process their once owner—that poor, wild, sorrow-stricken
old man is undergoing in some alms-house burial ground!”
“Do you recollect nothing of the purport of this recovered
paper?” asked Puffer Hopkins.
“Only this much,” answered Fob, “that it was a
conveyance of house and land, with the singular provision
that no transfer or sale of the property could be good and
sufficient while the child or son, I forget now his name,
was living. The names, the dates, much more the boundaries,
have all fled from my memory: but I shall
never forget the wild tones and eager looks of the old
creature that made the deed into fragments; whose voice
seemed to echo the Sea, and who borrowed from it the
method of his acts!”
It suddenly entered the mind of Puffer Hopkins, whose
attention had been strongly fastened upon the narrative
of the little tailor, that the old man, that this sufferer,
of so long since, and who was supposed by Fob to lie in
his grave, might be none other than his kind and singular
companion whom he had followed from the Public Hall.
He was full of the thought and interchanging scarcely
another word with the tailor, he left the garret, pondering
on what he had heard, and striving to gather out of it
something that might bear on what seemed the distracted
fortunes of Hobbleshank.
| CHAPTER XII.
A FURTHER ACQUAINTANCE WITH FOB, THE TAILOR. The career of Puffer Hopkins | |