University of Virginia Library

9. DUBERLY DOUBTINGTON,
THE MAN WHO COULDN'T MAKE UP HIS MIND

“Leah, tell your master dinner's been waiting for him
this hour.”

“He can't come, mem;—the man's with him yet,
mem.”

“What man?”

“The solumcolly man, mem;—the man that stays so
long, and is always so hard to go.”

Every one who has visiters is aware of the great
difference among them in the matter referred to by Leah.
In fact, they may be divided into two classes—visiters
who are “easy to go” and administer themselves, according
to Hahnemann, in homœopathic doses, and visiters
who are “hard to go,” and are exhibited in quantity, in
conformity with regular practice.

The individual who was guilty of keeping Mr. Edax
Rerum from his dinner was Duberly Doubtington, a
man who couldn't make up his mind—a defect of character
which rendered him peculiarly hard to go, and
made him responsible for having caused many to eat
their mutton cold. It was Juliet who found,

and Duberly's farewells are equally interminable. When
he has once fairly effected a lodgment, he is rooted to
the spot. It is as difficult for him to go off, as it frequently
is for stage heroes to make their pistols shoot. But,
though it is hard for him to go, yet he finds it quite easy
to be hours in going. By way of preparation, he first
reaches his hat, and “smooths its raven down.” He
then lays it aside again for the greater convenience of
drawing on a glove, and that operation being completed,
the gauntlet is speedily drawn off that he may adjust his
side-locks. Much time being consumed in these interesting
preliminaries, he has no difficulty at all in employing
an additional hour when once fairly upon his
legs. He discourses over the back of his chair, he
pauses at the parlour door, he hesitates in the hall, and
rallies manfully on the outer steps. The colder the
weather the more determined his grasp upon his victim,
having decidedly the advantage over the resident of the
mansion, in being hatted, coated, and gloved. In this
way, indeed, he deserves a medal from the faculty for
cutting out doctor's work, especially in influenza times.

The straps and buckles of Duberly's resolution will
not hold, no matter how tightly he may pull them up,
and he has suffered much in the unphilosophic attempt
to sit upon two stools. When he starts upon a race, an
unconsidered shade of opinion is sure to catch him by
the skirt, and draw him back. He is, in a measure,
Fabian in policy. He shifts his position continually,
and never hazards an attack. His warfare is a succession
of feints and unfinished demonstrations, and he has
been aptly likened to a leaden razor, which looks sharp
enough, but will turn in the cutting. He is in want of
a pair of mental spectacles; for he has a weakness in the
optic nerve of his mind's eye which prevents him, in
regarding the future, from seeing beyond the nose of the
present movement. The chemistry of events, which

figures out ulterior results from immediate combination
and instant action, is a science as yet unknown to Duberly,
Doubtington. He cannot tell what to think; he
knows not what to do. The situations in which he is
placed have never occurred to him before; the lights of
experience are wanting, and he is therefore perplexed
in the labyrinth. Like the fabled coffin of Mohammed,
he is always in a state of “betweenity.” He is, in short,
as a forcible writer well observes, one of those unfortunate
people who seldom experience “the sweet slumber
of a decided opinion.”

Such is the moral man of Duberly Doubtington, and
his physical man betrays traits of indecision equally as
strong. He tries to encourage his heart by cocking his
beaver à la militaire, but its furry fierceness cannot
contradict the expression of the features it surmounts.
His eyebrows form an uncertain arch, rising nearly an
inch above the right line of determination, and the button
of his nose is so large and blunt as to lend any thing but
a penetrating look to his countenance. His under lip
droops as if afraid to clench resolutely with its antagonist;
and his whiskers hang dejectedly down, instead of
bristling like a chevaux de frise toward the outer angle
of the eye. The hands of Mr. Doubtington always
repose in his pockets, unwilling to trust to their own
means of support, and he invariably leans his back
against the nearest sustaining object. When he walks,
his feet shuffle here and there so dubiously that one may
swear they have no specific orders where to go; and so
indefinite are the motions of his body, that even the tails
of his coat have no characteristic swing. They look,
not like Mr. Doubtington's coat-tails, but like coat-tails
in the abstract—undecided coat-tails, that have not yet
got the hang of anybody's back, and have acquired no

more individuality than those which dangle at the shop
doors in Water street.

Duberly Doubtington was at one time tolerably comfortable
in his pecuniary circumstances. His father had
been successful in trade, and, of course, thought it unnecessary
to teach his children to make up their minds
about any thing but enjoying themselves. This neglect,
however, proved fatal to the elder Doubtington.

That worthy individual being taken one warm summer
afternoon with an apoplectic fit, the younger Doubtington
was so perplexed whether or not to send for a physician,
and if he did, what physician should be called in—
whether he should or should not try to bleed him with
a penknife, and whether it was most advisable to have
him put to bed up stairs or to leave him upon the sofa
down stairs,—that the old gentleman, being rather pressed
for time, could not await the end of the debate, and
quietly slipped out of the world before his son could
make up his mind as to the best method of keeping him
in it. In fact, it was almost a chance that the senior
Doubtington obtained sepulture at all, as Duberly could
not make up his mind where that necessary business
should take place; and he would have been balancing the
pros and cons of the question to this day, if some other
person, more prompt of decision, had not settled the
matter.

Duberly Doubtington was now his own master.
There were none entitled to direct, to control, or to
advise him. He was the Phæton of his own fortunes, and
could drive the chariot where he pleased. But, although
he had often looked forward to this important period
with much satisfaction, and had theorised upon it with
great delight, yet in practice he found it not quite so well
adapted to his peculiar abilities as he thought it would

be. A share of decision is required even by those who
are placed beyond the necessity of toiling for bread. The
disposition of his means frequently called on him to
resolve upon a definite course.

“I regard it as a very fair investment, Mr. Doubtington,”
said his broker; “your money is useless
where it is.”

`But, what do you advise?—under the circumstances,
what should I do?” replied Duberly.

“Of course, I don't pretend to direct. I want no unnecessary
responsibility. There's no knowing what
may happen these slippery times. I think the chance a
good one; but make up your mind about it.”

There are people who talk about making up one's
mind as if it were a task as easy as to eat a dinner, or
as if it were as purely mechanical as driving a nail, or
putting on a pair of old familiar boots.

“I pay that man for attending to my business,”
muttered Duberly, “and yet he has the impudence to
tell me to make up my mind!—That's the very thing I
want him to do for me. The tailor makes my clothes—
Sally makes my bed—nature makes my whiskers, and
John makes my fires; yet I must be bothered to make
up my mind about money matters! I can't—the greatest
nuisances alive are these responsibility shifting people;
and, if some one would tell me who else to get to attend
to my business, I'd send that fellow flying.”

Difficult, however, as he supposed it would be, Duberly
at length found a gentleman manager of his pecuniary
affairs, who never troubled him to make up his mind,
with what results shall appear anon.

Duberly could not resolve whether it was the best
policy to travel first in the old world or in the new, and
he therefore did neither; but as time is always heavy on

the hands of those who have much of it at disposal, and
as it is difficult to lounge eternally at home, or in the
street, he slowly established what the Scotch call a
“howf” for each portion of the day. In the morning
he dozed over the newspapers at a reading room; between
noon and the dinner hour, he lolled upon three
chairs at the office of his friend Capias the lawyer, by
way of facilitating that individual's business; the afternoon
was divided between whittling switches at home
and riding to some popular resort, where he cut his name
upon the table. In the evening, if he did not yawn at
the theatre, he visited some hospitable mansion, where
the elders were good natured and the juniors agreeable.

At the house of Mrs. St. Simon Sapsago, a bouncing
widow, with a dashing son, and a pair of daughters,
Mr. Duberly Doubtington was invariably well received;
for, although he could not make up his mind, he was in
other respects so “eligible” that Mrs. St. Simon Sapsago
was always pleased to see him, and willing that he
should either listen or talk as much as he liked within
her doors. Miss Ethelinda St. Simon Sapsago was a
very pretty girl; and, for some reason or other, comported
herself so graciously to Duberly, that, when troubled to
form a conclusion, he usually asked her advice, and to his
great satisfaction, was sure to receive it in a comfortable,
decisive way.

“Miss Ethelinda, I'm trying to make up my mind
about coats; but I can't tell whether I like bright buttons
or not. Nor do I know exactly which are the
nicest colours. I do wish there was only one sort of
buttons, and only one kind of colour; the way every
thing is now, is so tiresome—one's perpetually bothered.”

So Ethelinda St. Simon Sapsago, with her sweetest

smile, would give her views upon the subject, to Duberly's
great delight. In fact, she was his “council's consistory;”
or, as the Indians have it, she was his “sense-bearer,”
a very important item in the sum total of one's
domestic relations.

But, though these consultations were very frequent,
still Duberly said nothing to the purpose, notwithstanding
the fact that every one looked upon it as a “settled
thing,” and wanted to know when it was to be. Duberly
Doubtington, however, never dreamed of matrimony; or
if he did, it only floated like a vague mist across the
distant horizon of his speculative thoughts. He regarded
it as a matter of course that, at some period or other, he
should have a wife and children—just as we all expect
either to be bald, or to have gray hairs, and to die: but
he shivered at the idea of being called on to make up his
mind on such a step. He had a faint hope that he
would be married, as it were, imperceptibly; that it
would, like old age, steal upon him by degrees, so that he
might be used to it before he found it out. The connubial
state, however, is not a one into which a Doubtington
can slide by degrees; there is no such thing as being imperceptibly
married, a fact of which Mrs. and Miss St.
Simon Sapsago were fully aware, and, therefore, resolved
to precipitate matters by awakening Duberly's jealousy.

Ethelinda became cold upon giving her advice on the
subject of new coats and other matters. Indeed, when
asked by Duberly whether she did not think it would be
better for him to curtail his whiskers somewhat during
the summer months, she went so far as to say that she
didn't care what he did with them, and that she never
had observed whether he wore huge corsair whiskers, or
lawyerlike apologies. Duberly was shocked at a
defection so flagrant on the part of his “sense-bearer.”

Insult his whiskers!—he couldn't make up his mind
what to think of it.

But still more shocked was he when he observed that
she smiled upon Mr. Adolphus Fitzflam, who cultivated
immense black curls, latitudinarian whiskers, black
moustaches, with an imperial to match—Fitzflam, who
made it the business of his life to “do the appalling,” and
out-haired everybody except the bison at the “Zoological
Institute.” Duberly felt uncomfortable; he was not
in love—at least he had never found it out—but he was
troubled with a general uneasiness, an oppression, a depression,
and a want of appetite. “Gastric derangement,”
said the quack advertisements, and Duberly took a box
of pills: “but one disease,” said the newspapers, and
Duberly swallowed another box of pills, but without
relief. Whenever Fitzflam approached, the symptoms
returned.

“I can't make up my mind about it,” said Duberly;
“but I don't think I like that buffalo fellow, Fitzflam.
Why don't they make him up into mattrasses, and stuff
cushions with whatever's left?”

“Mr. Doubtington, isn't Augustus Fitzflam a duck?”
said Ethelinda one evening when they were left tête-à-tête;
“such beautiful hair!”

“I can't tell whether he's a duck or not,” said Duberly,
dryly, “I haven't seen much more of him than the
tip of his nose; but, if not a member of the goose
family, he will some day share the fate of the man I saw
at Fairmount—be drowned in his own locks.”

“But he looks so romantic—so piratical—as if he had
something on his mind, never slept, and had a silent
sorrow here.”

“He had better try a box of the vegetable pills,”
thought Duberly.

“Well, I do declare it's not surprising that so many
have fallen in love with Adolphus Fitzflam,” and Miss
Ethelinda St. Simon Sapsago breathed a scarcely perceptible
sigh.

Duberly started—his eyes were opened to his own
complaint at once, and somehow or other, without
making up his mind, he hurriedly declared himself.

“Speak to my ma,” faintly whispered Miss Ethelinda
St. Simon Sapsago.

“To-morrow,” replied Duberly Doubtington, taking
a tender, but rapid farewell.

Duberly was horror-struck at his own rashness. He
tossed and rolled all night, trying to make up his mind
as to the propriety of his conduct. He stayed at home
all day for the same purpose, and the next day found
him still irresolute.

“Mrs. St. Simon Sapsago's compliments, and wishes
to know if Mr. Duberly Doubtington is ill.”

“No!”

Three days more, and yet the mind of Mr. Doubtington
was a prey to perplexity.

Mr. Julius St. Simon Sapsago called to ask the
meaning of his conduct, and Duberly promised to inform
him when he had made up his mind.

Mr. Adolphus Fitzflam, as the friend of Julius St. S.
Sapsago, with a challenge.

“Leave your errand, boy,” said Doubtington, angrily,
“and go.”

Fitzflam winked at the irregularity, and retreated.

Duberly lighted a cigar with the cartel, and puffed
away vigorously.

`What's to be done?—marry, or be shot! I don't
like either—at least, I've come to no conclusion on the
subject. When I've made up my mind, I'll let 'em
know—plenty of time.”

No notice being taken of the challenge, Mr. Julius St.
Simon Sapsago assaulted Mr. Doubtington in the street
with a horsewhip, while Fitzflam stood by to enjoy the
sport. There is nothing like a smart external application
to quicken the mental faculties, and so our hero found it.

“Stop!” said he, dancing à la Celeste.

“You're a scoundrel!” cried Julius, and the whip
cracked merrily.

“I've made up my mind!” replied Duberly, suddenly
shooting his clenched fist into the countenance of the
flagellating Julius, who turned a backward summerset
over a wheelbarrow. Fitzflam lost his hat in an abrupt
retreat up the street, and he was fortunate in his swiftness,
for, “had all his hairs been lives,” Duberly would
have plucked them.

But, from this moment, the star of Duberly Doubtington
began to wane. The case of Sapsago versus Doubtington,
for breach of promise of marriage, made heavy
inroads upon his fortune. His new man of business,
who took the responsibility of managing his money
affairs without pestering him for directions, sunk the
whole of his cash in the Bubble and Squeak Railroad and
Canal Company, incorporated with banking privileges.
Doubtington, therefore, for once was resolute, and turned
politician; and in this capacity it was that he called upon
Mr. Edax Rerum for his influence to procure him an
office. He still lives in the hope of a place, but, unluckily
for himself, can never make up his mind on which
side to be zealous until the crisis is past and zeal is
useless.

His last performance was characteristic. Having
escorted the Hon. Phinkey Phunks to the steamboat, the
vessel began to move before he had stepped ashore.
He stood trembling on the brink. “Jump, you fool!”
said a jarvey.—“Take keer—it's too fur!” said a newspaper
boy. The advice being balanced, Doubtington
was perplexed, and, making a half step, as the distance
widened, he plumped into the river. He was fished out
almost drowned, and, as he stood streaming and wo-be-gone
upon the wharf, while other less liquid patriots earned
golden opinions by shouting, “Hurrah for Phunks!”
imagination could scarcely conceive a more appropriate
emblem of the results of indecision than that presented
by Duberly Doubtington, a man who, had it been left to
himself, would never have been in the world at all.