 | CHAPTER XIV.
PUFFER HOPKINS ENCOUNTERS HOBBLESHANK AGAIN. The career of Puffer Hopkins |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
PUFFER HOPKINS ENCOUNTERS HOBBLESHANK AGAIN.
There could be no doubt—apart from what had occured
to Mr. Small—that a general election was close at hand;
and that the city was rapidly falling into a relapse of its
annual fever. The walls and stable-doors broke out all
an erisypelas of liberty-temples and muscular fists clenched
upon hammers, appeared upon the forehead of the pumps;
the air swarmed as with forerunners of a plague, with
ominous flags streaked from end to end with a red and
white and spotted inflammation; journeyman patriots and
self-sacrificing office-seekers began to shout and vociferate
as in a delirium; in a word, unless the customary blood-letting
incident to a charter contest afforded relief, the
patient was in a fair way of going stark mad, and losing
the humble share of sense with which it looks after its
washing and ironing, and provides for its butchers and
bakers' dues during the rest of the year. It could scarcely
be expected that Puffer Hopkins should escape the general
endemic; on the contrary, it being his first season, the
symptoms were in him extremely violent, and furious.
From morning till night he sate at his desk like one spell-bound,
fabricating resolutions, preambles, and reports of
retiring committees, by the gross; or starting up every now
and then and stalking the room vehemently, and then
returning and committing the emphatic thoughts that had
occurred to him in his hurried travel, to the record before
him; varying this employment with speeches without
number, delivered in all possible attitudes to imaginary
audiences of every temper, complexion and constitution.
Sometimes he had very distinctly before him, in his
mind's eye, an assemblage where the carting interest prevailed,
and where the reduction of Corporation-cartmen's
wages, for instance, might be undergoing an examination.
“Gentlemen,” said Puffer, to the prospective audience,
“Gentlemen, I put it to you whether twenty cents a load
will pay a cartman and a cartman's horse? Gentlemen,
I see a prospect before me for any man that undertakes to
work for such prices. In six month he is a pauper, his
children's paupers, his horse's a pauper, and what's better,
walks up and down the Avenue, where he's turned out
to die, like the apparition of a respectable dirtman's horse
that had been: meeting the Aldermen as they ride out in
their jaunts, and rebuking 'em to the face for their niggardly
parsimony. Has'nt a cartman, a dirt-cartman, rights,
I'd like to know? Has'nt he a soul; and why should
of the poor man's brow be wrung out to fertilize the soil
of the rich man's field?” (Imaginary cheers, beginning
in a gentle “G' up,” and ending in an earthquake
hurrah!)
Then his audience consisted of a great number of individuals,
who from their being clad in nice broadcloth
coats, and always having their beards closely trimmed,
are supposed to be gentlemen and Christians.
“Fellow citizens!” cried Mr. Hopkins, “We all see
what they're driving at;” alluding to the other party,
of course; “They're at work undermining the pillars of
society. That's what they would have! Not a man of
'em but would plant a keg of powder under every pulpit,
on Sunday morning, and blow all our respected clergy to
heeven in a twinkling. They're infidels and agrarians,
fellow-citizens, and when they'd done that, they'd let
the pews out for apple-stands, and fall straightway to
eating soup out of the contribution plates. If you don't
beat 'em at the next election, if you don't rouse yourselves
in your strength and overwhelm these monsters and
Jacobins, I despair of my country. I despair of mankind;
and you'll have a herd of vipers saddled on you next
year for a corporation!”
Abandoning this disagreeable region, Puffer relieved
himself by the fiction of a room full of stout, rosy, comfortable
looking gentlemen, who groaned in spirit under
a great burthen of city charges, and whose constant saying
it was, that they, figuratively only, were eaten up with
taxes.
“The city aldermen, the common council of this
mighty metropolis,” said Puffer, “is nothing but a corporation
of boa-constrictors; a board of greedy anacondas,
that swallow lot after lot, house upon house, of the freeholders,
as if they were so many brick-and-mortar sandwiches.
Commissioners of street-opening run the plough
through a man's sleeping-room of a morning before he's
out of bed; and clap a set of rollers under his dwelling
and tumble it into the river, as if it were so much old
lumber. Will you submit to this? Never! The spirits
of your forefathers protest against it; your posterity implore
you to snatch their bread, their very subsistence, from the
maw of these gigantic wolves in pacific apparel! The
you to save them from ruin!”
It is impossible to conjecture to what regions of rhetoric
and simile-land the imagination of Puffer Hopkins might
have conveyed him, now that he was fairly on the wing;
for at this moment, and in the very midst of these pleasant
fables and suppositions, Puffer received by the hand of a
messenger, a notice from the chief or executive committee,
directing him to proceed forthwith to the house of Mr.
Nicholas Finch, an electioneering agent, and secure his
services. Now Puffer had heard of Nick Finch, as he was
familiarly entitled, before; believed him to be as thorough-going,
limber-tongued and supple-jointed fellow as
could be found in the county; and therefore relished not
a little the honor of effecting a negociation for his distinguished
talent. Without delay he hurried forth; rousing
by the way the messenger, who being a fellow besotted
by drink and stupified with much political talk, in tap-rooms
and elsewhere, had halted in one of the landings,
and there, retiring, penitentially, to a corner, had gone off
into a profound and melodious slumber. Performing this
agreeable duty, and lending the gentleman an arm to the
street, Puffer proceeded to the quarters where he understood
Mr. Finch held his lair. He soon approached the
precinct, but not knowing it by number, he put the question
to one of a group lads playing at toys against a
fence side. A dozen started up at once to answer.
“Nick Finch!—Nick Finch, sir,—over here, sir,—this
way, through the alley!” And word having passed
along that a gentleman was in quest of Mr. Finch, Puffer
was telegraphed along from window to window, area to
area, until he was left at the foot of an alley, by an old
woman who had galloped at his side for several rods, who
shouted in his ear, “Up there, sir, up there!” and
hobbled away again. Left to himself, Puffer entered by
a gate, and making cautious progress along a boarded
lane, arrived in front of a row of common houses, to
which access was obtained by aid of outside steps fastened
against the buildings. Ascending the first that offered, he
rapped inquiringly at the door, was hailed from within by
a decisive voice, and marched in. The apartment he had
invaded was an oblong room, with a sanded floor, a desk
on a raised platform at the farthest extremity, a full length
corner, and a full length Hamilton, bronzed, in the opposite;
against the wall, and over a fire-place in which a
pile of wood was crackling and blazing, was fastened the
declaration of Independence, with all those interesting
specimens of hand-writing of the fifty-two signers, done
in lithograph; and across a single window that lighted the
room, where he had entered, was stretched a half American
flag, cut athwart, directly through all the stars, and
suspended by a tape.
The owner of the voice, a short, thick-set man, with a
half-mown beard, a hard, firm countenance, and apparelled
in a cart-frock, stood in the middle of the apartment,
and before him, ranged on a bench, sate a dozen or so
ill-dressed fellows, whose countenances were fixed steadily
fixed on his.
“Come in, sir—come in,” said the thick-set man.
“Don't hesitate—these are only a few friends, that are
spending a little time with me: paying me a sociable
visit of a day or two, that's all.” It occurred to Puffer
that if these fellows were actually visiters of the gentleman
in the cart-frock, that he had decidedly the most select
circle of acquaintance of any one he could mention.
“I'm glad you 've come, sir,” continued the electioneerer.
“I've been expecting you some days.”
“Then you know me?” said Puffer.
“Of course I do,” answered the other. “Allow me to
introduce you to my friends. Gentlemen, (turning to the
line of ragged gentry on the bench) Puffer Hopkins, Esq.,
of the Opposition Committee. Rise, if you please, and
give him a bow!”
The ragged gentry did as they were bid: and straightway
sate down again, as if the unusual exertion of a
salutation had entirely exhausted them.
“I am afraid I interrupt business,” said Puffer. “You
seemed engaged when I came in.”
“I was,” answered the electioneer, “and you entered
just in the nick of time to aid me. You must act as an
inspector of election; you have a good person, a clear
full voice, and will judge my voters tenderly. Take
this chair, if you please!” Saying this, he at once inducted
Puffer in a seat behind the desk on the raised platform,
placed before him a green box, and proceeded to
of small papers curiously folded, which they received
with a knowing smile.
“Now, gentlemen, go up as I give the signal,” said
Mr. Finch. “Mr. Peter Foil, will you have the goodness
to deposite your ballot?”
At this, one of the company who had found his way,
by some mysterious dispensation, into a faded suit of
black—it was the broken-down parson's—but whose hair
was, nevertheless, uncombed, and his hat in very reduced
circumstances, shambled across the floor, and made a
show of inserting a vote in the green box before Puffer
Hopkins.
“That will never do, sir,” said the electioneerer rather
sternly, as he was crossing back again. “You shuffled
up to the counter as if you were shoaling through the
market, according to your well-known habits, stealing
pigs' feet of the butchers to make broth of: and when you
attempted to give the inspector your ticket, any one could
have sworn you had been a fish-vender's secretary,
thrusting your hand in a basket to pull out a flounder or
a bunch of eels. Try it again.”
Mr. Foil renewed the attempt: this time with greater
success.
“That's better,” said Mr. Finch, encouragingly,
“worthier the respectable man whose clothes you 've got
on: more of the air of a civilized being. Now, Mr.
Runlet.”
At this, a heavy built personage proceeded to perform
his duty as a franchise citizen; but in so cumbrous a gait
and with so weak an eye to the keeping and symmetry of
his part, as to call down a severe rebuke from Mr. Finch.
“You pitch about, as if you were on your own ploughed
land at Croton, and not down here earning handsome
wages on the pavement for doing freeman's service.
You must walk more level, and not up and down like a
scart buffalo: carry your arms at your side, and don't
swing them akimbo, like a pair of crooked scythe-sneaths.
You'll do better with your dinner to steady you!”
After Mr. Runlet, a third was summoned, who wore
the garments of the volunteer fireman; but was condemned
as failing most lamentably in his swagger, and
missing to speak out of a corner of his mouth, as if he
amended his performance, and succeeded at last in bullying
the inspector with a grace, and getting his vote in by
sheer force of impudence.
Another was called, who, springing up with great alacrity,
endued, in a pair of stout corduroys, with a shirt of
red flannel, rolled back upon his arms over one of white:
a great brawny fellow, pitched about from one quarter of
the room to another, putting it into imaginary antagonists
with all his might; at one time, knocking one on the head
with his broad hand, then teasing another's shins with a
sideway motion of the leg, and discomfiting a third with a
recoil of a bony elbow; to the unqualified satisfaction and
delight of Mr. Finch and all lookers-on: and then retiring
to his seat, apparently exhausted and worn out with his
savage sport.
About half the company had been drilled and exercised
in this manner, when a door was suddenly thrown open at
the lower end of the apartment; a shrewish face thrust
in, and a shrill voice appertaining thereto called out that
dinner was ready, and had better be eaten while it was hot.
Puffer Hopkins caught sight of a table spread in a room
that was entered by a descending step or two: the voters
in rehearsal started to their feet, and cast longing eyes towards
the paradise thus opened to their view; and before
Mr. Finch could give order one way or the other, they
had broken all bounds, and rushed down, like so many
harpies, on the banquet spread below.
“If my eyes are not glandered,” cried Mr. Finch, as
soon as they were gone, “this is capital sport. Dang
me, Mr. Hopkins, if I would 'nt rather drive a tandem
through a china-shop, than manage these fellows. I 've
polished 'em a little, you see: but they're too thick on
the wall yet, they daub and plaster, and do 'nt hard-finish
up. You 'd like to have 'em for a day or two, would 'nt
you?”
Puffer, descending from the inspector's seat, which he
had filled during the rehearsal, with all the gravity he
could command, and, complimenting Mr. Finch upon the
show of his men, admitted that he would; and that he
was there on that very business.
“There is'nt a better troop in town, tho' I say it,” pursued
the agent, “a little rough, but there's capital stuff
up finer and sturdier rioters than any man in town: only
look at that chap in the red shirt—he 's a giant, a perfect
Nilghau with horns, in a crowd.”
Puffer answered that he thought that proposition could
'nt be safely denied.
“Perhaps my sailors, an't got the salt water roll exactly:
but they'll pass pretty well I reckon for East River
boatmen, and Hellgate pilots, and that's full as good; you
want twelve men for three days' work, in how many
wards?”
“The whole seventeen if you please:” answered
Puffer. “I'm afraid to try 'em in so many;” continued
Mr. Finch. “You might have 'em for five river wards,
and one out o' town: and the volunteer Fireman, (he's
first rate when he's warm'd with a toddy,) for any number.
Terms, twenty-five dollars per diem, as they say
in Congress.”
“It's a bargain, sir”—said Puffer, seizing the virtuous
gentleman by the hand. “You'll bring them up yourself?”
“I will—you may depend on it: your'e a lucky man—
the other side offered me twenty, and as much oats as my
horse could eat in a week; but it would'nt do.”
With this understanding, Puffer left; the agent crying
after him to call in on Monday week, when they would
be finally broken in—“You make a capital inspector; all
you want is age and silver spectacles to make you as respectable
a rogue as ever sat behind a green box!”
Breathing the word “mum” in an under tone, and
shaking his head in reproof at the hardihood of the agent
Puffer descended into the yard.
He had reached the ground, and was turning to leave
the place, when he discovered moving across the extremity
of the yard and passing into a house many degrees
poorer than the agent's, a figure bent with years;
he walked with a slow shuffling gait, and pausing often,
wrung his hands and looked keenly into the earth, as if
all his hopes lay buried there. Puffer knew not whether
to advance and greet the old man, as his heart prompted,
or to withdraw; when he raised his head as if he knew
the footstep that was near, and discovering Puffer Hopkins,
started from the dotage of his walk and manner,
at every pace he hailed him from the distance.
“God bless you,—God bless you, my boy!” cried Hobbleshank.
“Where have you tarried so long? You have
not forgotten the old man so soon, eh? If you knew how
often I had thought of you; you would have paid me but
fair interest on my thoughts to have called at the old
man's lodgings, and asked how the world, a very wilful
and wicked one, had gone with him? Am I right?”
“You are—you are,” answered Puffer, who could not
fail to be touched by the kindly eagerness of the old man.
“I have abused your goodness, and was repenting of my
folly but this morning—I meant to call.” “You did!”
said the old man quickly. “Well never mind that—but
come with me.”
With this they entered a low building, the roof of
which was moss-grown, and hung over like a great eyebrow,
and the door sustained by a single hinge, stood ever
askew, allowing snow, tempest and hail to beat in and
keep a perpetual Lapland through the hall. Opening
the first door, they entered a square room, cold, bare and
desolate-looking, with no soul apparently present.
“How is this?” said Hobbleshank. “I thought Peter
Hibbard dwelt here.”
“So he does!” answered a broken voice from the corner
of the apartment. “Peter Hibbard's body lodges
here. Heaven save his soul—that may be wandering in
some other world.”
“Are you Peter Hibbard?” asked Hobbleshank, approaching
the bed-side where the speaker lay.
“Peter Hibbard am I,” he answered, “as far as I can
know: though I sometimes think Peter—one Peter—died
better than a score of years ago. When a man's soul is
killed and his heart frost-stricken—then he's dead, is'nt
he?”
“He should be!” answered Hobbleshank. “But Heaven
is'nt always so kind. Sometimes the body's dead,
and the soul all alive, like a fire—driving the poor shattered
body to and fro, on thankless tasks and errands that
end in despair: that's worse.”
“There's no despair for me!” pursued Peter, disclosing
a lean haggard face, and leering at Hobbleshank from
under the blanket. “There's nothing troubles me; I've
got no soul.”
“Where's your wife Peter?” asked the old man.
“I've got none,” answered the other. “No wife, nor
child, nor grand-child, boy nor girl, nor uncle, aunt, sister,
brother or neighbor: I and these four walls keep
house here.”
“But where are your old friends?” continued Hobbleshank.
“Ah! my old friends—there you are—are you? oh,
ho! There was Phil Sherrod—he died in his bed—of
an inflamed liver; Phil died finely, they say singing Old
Hundred. Don't believe it: he yielded the ghost choking
the parson with his bands. Parker Lent, at sea; Bill
Green, in jail for a stolen horse; it was St. John's pale
horse, they say; Charlotte Slocum, she married a Long
Island milkman and was drowned. There was another,”
continued the bed-ridden man, rising in his couch and
pressing his hand upon his brow—and peering from under
it towards Hobbleshank and Puffer, “another.”
“Yes—what of her?” asked Hobbleshank quickly.
“What of her?” he replied. “Are you sure it was a
woman? Yes, by Heaven, it was—it was; a rosy
buxom girl, but never Peter Hibbard's wife—why not?”
With this question he fell back and lay with his eyes
wide open and glaring; but still and motionless as a
stone.
“Why not?” said the bed-ridden man waking suddenly
from his trance of silence. “Why should Sim Lettuce
win where I lost? That was a flaming carbuncle on Sim's
nose, and many's the laugh Hetty and I have had thinking
of it; and yet she married him spite of it.”
“And Sim died—what then?” asked Hobbleshank,
watching the countenance of him he questioned with
painful earnestness. “What then, my good sir, what
then?”
“Let me see—Sim died; the carbuncle struck in and
turned to a St. Anothony's fire, and carried him off: Hetty
turned nurse. Did you know that? Nurse to a lovely lady;
she died too one day. Hetty went off—I followed her.”
“Yes, yes, you followed her,” repeated Hobbleshank,
anxious to keep the wandering wits of the sick man to
the subject. “Go on.”
“I followed her—did'nt I say so! On my honor,
red-nosed Sim's widow would not have me, eh! eh!
of the way place, I can tell you. Peter Hibbard watched
her many a year; but she never would be Mrs. Hibbard,
and here I lie this day, without a wife, or child; chick
nor grandchild, boy nor girl, nor uncle, aunt, sister,
brother or neighbor. We have a merry time, these four
walls and I.”
It was in vain that Hobbleshank attempted again and
again and by various devices, to bring back his mind to a
narrative humor; he kept reciting the incidents of his
hopelessness and desolation, and after a while fell into a
wild jumble, where every thing pointless and trivial was
huddled together; and then he declined into a senseless
torpor, where he lay dumb to every speech and entreaty
of the old man.
Leaving him in this mood, Hobbleshank and Puffer
turned away from his bed-side, and sending in a neighbor
that had stood watching at the door—for on such chance
aid the bed-ridden man trusted solely for life—to minister
to his wants, they escaped swiftly from the place. In
perfect silence they walked through street after street
together, until they reached a corner where their way
separated.
“All is lost—all is lost!” said Hobbleshank grasping
Puffer Hopkins by the hand, as tears flowed into his eyes;
and parting without a further word, in gloom and silence,
each took his way.
| CHAPTER XIV.
PUFFER HOPKINS ENCOUNTERS HOBBLESHANK AGAIN. The career of Puffer Hopkins | |