 | FYDGET FYXINGTON. Charcoal sketches, or, Scenes in a metropolis |  |
19. FYDGET FYXINGTON.
The illustrious Pangloss, who taught the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology
at the Westphalian chateau
of the puissant Baron Thundertentronckh, held it
as a cardinal maxim of his philosophy, que tout est
au mieux; that “it's all for the best.” Pangloss
was therefore what is called an optimist, and discontent—
to use the favourite word of the slang-whangers—was
repudiated by him and his followers. This doctrine,
however, though cherished in the abstract, is but little
practised out of the domain of Thundertentronckh. The
world is much more addicted to its opposite. “All's for
the worst” is a very common motto, and under its influence
there are thousands who growl when they go to bed,
and growl still louder when they get up; they growl at
their breakfast, they growl at their dinner, they growl at
their supper, and they growl between meals. Discontent
is written in every feature of their visage; and they go
on from the beginning of life until its close, always growling,
in the hope of making things better by scaring them
into it with ugly noises. These be your passive grumbletonians.
When the castle was on fire, Sir Abel Handy
stood wringing his hands, in expectation that the fire
would be civil enough to go out of itself. So is it with
the passive. He would utter divers maledictions upon
the heat, but would sit still to see if the flame could not
be scolded into going out of itself.
The active grumbletonians, however, though equally
opposed in practice to the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology,
are a very different race of mortals from
the passives. The world is largely indebted to them for
every comfort and convenience with which it abounds;
and they laugh at the inquiry whether their exertions
have conduced to the general happiness, holding it that
happiness consists chiefly in exertion—to which the passives
demur, as they look back with no little regret to
the lazy days of pastoral life, when Chaldean shepherds
lounged upon the grass. The actives are very much
inclined to believe that whatever is, is wrong; but
then they have as an offset, the comfortable conviction
that they are able to set it right—an opinion which fire
cannot melt out of them. These restless fellows are in
a vast majority; and hence it is that the surface of this
earthly sphere is such a scene of activity; hence it is that
for so many thousand years, the greater part of each
generation has been unceasingly employed in labour and
bustle; rushing from place to place; hammering, sawing,
and driving; hewing down and piling up mountains; and
unappalled, meeting disease and death, both by sea and
land. To expedite the process of putting things to rights,
likewise, hence it is that whole hecatombs of men have
been slaughtered on the embattled field, and that the cord,
the fagot, and the steel have been in such frequent demand.
Sections of the active grumbletonians sometimes
differ about the means of making the world a more comfortable
place, and time being short, the labour-saving
process is adopted. The weaker party is knocked on
the head. It saves an incalculable deal of argument, and
answers pretty nearly the same end.
But yet, though the world is many years old, and
the “fixing process” has been going on ever since it
with less time to do it in. The actives consequently
redouble their activity. They have called in the aid of
gunpowder and steam, and in this goodly nineteenth century
are kicking up such a terrible dust, and are setting
things to rights at such a rate, that the passives have no
comfort of their lives. Where they herd in nations, as in
Mexico, the actives cluster on their borders and set things
to rights with the rifle; and when they are solitary amid
the crowd, as among us, they are fretted to fiddlestrings,
like plodding shaft horses with unruly leaders. They are
environed with perils. In one quarter, hundreds of
stately mansions are brought thundering to the ground,
because the last generation put things to rights in the
wrong way, and in another quarter, thousands are going
up on the true principle. Between them both, the passive
is kept in a constant state of solicitude, and threads
his way through piles of rubbish, wearing his head askew
like a listening chicken, looking above with one eye, to
watch what may fall on him, and looking below with the
other, to see what he may fall upon. Should he travel, he is
placed in a patent exploding steamboat, warranted to boil
a gentleman cold in less than no time; or he is tied to the
tail of a big steam kettle, termed a locomotive, which
goes sixty miles an hour horizontally, or if it should meet
impediment, a mile in half a second perpendicularly.
Should he die, as many do, of fixo-phobia, and seek peace
under the sod, the spirit of the age soon grasps the spade
and has him out to make way for improvement.
The passive grumbletonian is useless to himself and
to others: the active grumbletonian is just the reverse.
In general, he combines individual advancement with
public prosperity; but there are exceptions even in that
class—men, who try to take so much care of the world
intent.
Such a man is Fydget Fyxington, an amelioration-of-the-human-race-by-starting-from-first-principles-philo
sopher. Fydget's abstract principle, particularly in
matters of government and of morals, is doubtless a
sound rule; but he looks so much at the beginning
that he rarely arrives at the end, and when he advances
at all, he marches backward, his face being directed toward
the starting place instead of the goal. By this
means he may perhaps plough a straight furrow, but instead
of curving round obstructions, he is very apt to be
thrown down by them.
Like most philosophers who entertain a creed opposed
to that of the illustrious Pangloss, Fydget may be fitly
designated as the fleshless one. He never knew the joy
of being fat, and is one of those who may console themselves
with the belief that the physical sharpness which
renders them a walking chevaux de frise, and as dangerous
to embrace as a porcupine, is but an outward emblem
of the acuteness of the mind. Should he be thrust in a
crowd against a sulky fellow better in flesh than himself,
who complains of the pointedness of his attentions, Fydget
may reflect that even so do his reasoning faculties
bore into a subject. When gazing in a mirror, should
his eye be offended by the view of lantern jaws, and
channelled cheeks, and bones prematurely labouring to
escape from their cuticular tabernacle, he may easily
figure to himself the restless energy of his spirit, which
like a keen blade, weareth away the scabbard—he may
look upon himself as an intellectual “cut and thrust”—a
thinking chopper and stabber. But it may be doubted
whether Fydget ever reverts to considerations so purely
selfish, except when he finds that the “fine points” of
tear his clothes.
Winter ruled the hour when Fydget Fyxington was
last observed to be in circulation—winter, when men
wear their hands in their pockets and seldom straighten
their backs—a season however, which, though sharp and
biting in its temper, has redeeming traits. There is something
peculiarly exhilarating in the sight of new-fallen
snow. The storm which brings it is not without a charm.
The graceful eddying of the drifts sported with by the
wind, and the silent gliding of the feathery flakes, as one
by one they settle upon the earth like fairy creatures
dropping to repose, have a soothing influence not easily
described, though doubtless felt by all. But when the
clouds, having performed their office, roll away, and the
brightness of the morning sun beams upon an expanse
of sparkling, unsullied whiteness; when all that is common-place,
coarse, and unpleasant in aspect, is veiled for
the time, and made to wear a fresh and dazzling garb,
new animation is felt by the spirit. The young grow
riotous with joy, and their merry voices ring like bells
through the clear and bracing air; while the remembrance
of earlier days gives a youthful impulse to the
aged heart.
But to all this there is a sad reverse. The resolution
of these enchantments into their original elements by
means of a thaw, is a necessary, but, it must be confessed,
a very doleful process, fruitful in gloom, rheum, inflammations,
and fevers—a process which gives additional
pangs to the melancholic, and causes valour's self to
droop like unstarched muslin. The voices of the boys
are hushed; the whizzing snow-ball astonishes the unsuspicious
wayfarer no more; the window glass is permitted
and the dejected urchin sneaks moodily from school.
So changed is his nature, that he scarcely bestows a derisive
grin upon the forlorn sleigh, which ploughs its
course through mud and water, although its driver and
his passengers invite the jeer by making themselves small
to avoid it, and tempt a joke by oblique glances to see
whether it is coming.
Such a time was it when Fydget was extant—a sloppy
time in January. The city, it is true, was clothed in
snow; but it was melancholy snow, rusty and forlorn
in aspect, and weeping, as if in sorrow that its original
purity had become soiled, stained, and spotted by contact
with the world. Its whiteness had in a measure disappeared,
by the pressure of human footsteps; wheels and
runners had almost incorporated it with the common
earth; and, where these had failed in effectually doing
the work, remorseless distributers of ashes, coal dust,
and potato peelings, had lent their aid to give uniformity
to the dingy hue. But the snow, “weeping its spirit
from its eyes,” and its body too, was fast escaping from
these multiplied oppressions and contumelies. Large
and heavy drops splashed from the eaves; sluggish streams
rolled lazily from the alleys, and the gutters and crossings
formed vast shallow lakes, variegated by glaciers
and ice islands. They who roamed abroad at this unpropitious
time, could be heard approaching by the damp
sucking sound which emanated from their boots, as they
alternately pumped in and pumped out the water in their
progress, and it was thus that our hero travelled, having
no caoutchouc health-preservers to shield his pedals from
unwholesome contact.
The shades of evening were beginning to thicken, when
Fydget stopped shiveringly and looked through the glass
numerous lights, by the force of contrast, made an outside
seat still more uncomfortable.
The gong pealed out that tea was ready, and the
lodgers rushed from the stoves to comfort themselves
with that exhilarating fluid.
“There they go on first principles,” said Fydget Fyxington
with a sigh.
“Cla' de kitchen da',” said one of those ultra-aristocratic
members of society, a negro waiter, as he bustled
past the contemplative philosopher and entered the hotel
—“you ought to be gwang home to suppa', ole soul, if
you got some—yaugh—waugh!”
“Suppa', you nigga'!” contemptuously responded
Fydget, as the door closed—“I wish I was gwang home
to suppa', but suppers are a sort of thing I remember a
good deal oftener than I see. Every thing is wrong—
such a wandering from first principles!—there must be
enough in this world for us all, or we wouldn't be here;
but things is fixed so badly that I s'pose some greedy
rascal gets my share of suppa' and other such elegant
luxuries. It's just the way of the world; there's plenty
of shares of every thing, but somehow or other there are
folks that lay their fingers on two or three shares, and
sometimes more, according as they get a chance, and the
real owners, like me, may go whistle. They've fixed it
so that if you go back to first principles and try to bone
what belongs to you, they pack you right off to jail,
'cause you can't prove property. Empty stummicks and
old clothes ain't good evidence in court.
“What the deuse is to become of me! Something
must—and I wish it would be quick and hurra about it.
My clothes are getting to be too much of the summerhouse
order for the winter fashions. People will soon
myself, but boys is boys, and all boys is sassy. Since
the weather's been chilly, when I turn the corner to go
up town, I feel as if the house had too many windows
and doors, and I'm almost blow'd out of my coat and
pants. The fact is, I don't get enough to eat to serve for
ballast.”
After a melancholy pause, Fydget, seeing the coast
tolerably clear, walked in to warm himself at the fire
in the bar-room, near which he stood with great composure,
at the same time emptying several glasses of
comfortable compounds which had been left partly filled
by the lodgers when they hurried to their tea. Lighting a
cigar which he found half smoked upon the ledge of
the stove, he seated himself and puffed away much at his
ease.
The inmates of the hotel began to return to the room,
glancing suspiciously at Fydget's tattered integuments,
and drawing their chairs away from him as they sat
down near the stove. Fydget looked unconscious, emitting
volumes of smoke, and knocking off the ashes with
a nonchalant and scientific air.
“Bad weather,” said Brown
“I've noticed that the weather is frequently bad in
winter, especially about the middle of it, and at both
ends,” added Green. “I keep a memorandum book on
the subject, and can't be mistaken.”
“It's raining now,” said Griffinhoff—“what's the use
of that when it's so wet under foot already?”
“It very frequently rains at the close of a thaw,
and it's beneficial to the umbrella makers,” responded
Green.
“Nothin's fixed no how,” said Fydget with great
energy, for he was tired of listening.
Brown, Green, Griffinhoff, and the rest started and
stared.
“Nothin's fixed no how,” continued Fydget rejoicing
in the fact of having hearers—“our grand-dads must a
been lazy rascals. Why didn't they roof over the side
walks, and not leave every thing for us to do? I ain't got
no numbrell, and besides that, when it comes down as if
raining was no name for it, as it always does when I'm
cotch'd out, numbrells is no great shakes if you've got
one with you, and no shakes at all if it's at home.”
“Who's the indevidjual?” inquired Cameo Calliper,
Esq., looking at Fydget through a pair of lorgnettes.
Fydget returned the glance by making an opera glass
with each fist, and then continued his remarks: “It's a
pity we ain't got feathers, so's to grow our own jacket
and trousers, and do up the tailorin' business, and make
our own feather beds. It would be a great savin'—every
man his own clothes, and every man his own feather bed.
Now I've got a suggestion about that—first principles
bring us to the skin—fortify that, and the matter's done.
How would it do to bile a big kittle full of tar, tallow,
beeswax and injen rubber, with considerable wool, and
dab the whole family once a week? The young 'uns
might be soused in it every Saturday night, and the nigger
might fix the elderly folks with a whitewash brush.
Then there wouldn't be no bother a washing your clothes
or yourself, which last is an invention of the doctor to
make people sick, because it lets in the cold in winter and
the heat in summer, when natur' says shut up the porouses
and keep 'em out. Besides, when the new invention
was tore at the knees or wore at the elbows, just tell
the nigger to put on the kittle and give you a dab, and
you're patched slick—and so that whole mobs of people
mightn't stick together like figs, a little sperrits of turpentine
house-a-fire.”
“If that fellow don't go away, I'll hurt him,” said
Griffinhoff sotto voce.
“Where's a waiter?” inquired Cameo Calliper edging
off in alarm.
“He's crazy,” said Green—“I was at the hospital
once, and there was a man in the place who—”
“'Twould be nice for sojers,” added Fyxington, as
he threw away his stump, and very deliberately reached
over and helped himself to a fresh cigar, from a number
which Mr. Green had just brought from the bar and held
in his hand—“I'll trouble you for a little of your fire,”
continued he, taking the cigar from the mouth of Mr.
Green, and after obtaining a light, again placing the
borrowed Habana within the lips of that worthy individual,
who sat stupified at the audacity of the supposed
maniac. Fydget gave the conventional grin of thanks
peculiar to such occasions, and with a graceful wave of his
hand, resumed the thread of his lecture,—“'Twould be
nice for sojers. Stand 'em all of a row, and whitewash
'em blue or red, according to pattern, as if they were a
fence. The gin'rals might look on to see if it was done
according to Gunter; the cap'ins might flourish the brush,
and the corpulars carry the bucket. Dandies could fix
themselves all sorts of streaked and all sorts of colours.
When the parterials is cheap and the making don't cost
nothing, that's what I call economy, and coming as
near as possible to first principles. It's a better way,
too, of keeping out the rain, than my t'other plan
of flogging people when they're young, to make their
hides hard and waterproof. A good licking is a sound
first principle for juveniles, but they've got a prejudice
agin it.”
“Waiter!” cried Cameo Calliper.
“Sa!”
“Remove the incumbent—expose him to the atmosphere!”
“If you hadn't said that, I'd wopped him,” observed
Griffinhoff.
“Accordin' to first principles, I've as good a right to
be here as any body,” remarked Fydget indignantly.
“Cut you' stick, 'cumbent—take you'sef off, trash!”
said the waiter, keeping at a respectful distance.
“Don't come near me, Sip,” growled Fydget, doubling
his fist—“don't come near me, or I'll develope a
first principle and 'lucidate a simple idea for you—I'll
give you a touch of natur' without no gloves on—but I'll
not stay, though I've a clear right to do it, unless you are
able—yes, sassy able!—to put me out. If there is
any thing I scorns it's prejudice, and this room's so
full of it and smoke together that I won't stay. Your
cigar, sir,” added Fydget, tossing the stump to Mr.
Green and retiring slowly.
“That fellow's brazen enough to collect militia fines,”
said Brown, “and so thin and bony, that if pasted over
with white paper and rigged athwart ships, he'd make a
pretty good sign for an oyster cellar.”
The rest of the company laughed nervously, as if not
perfectly sure that Fydget was out of hearing.
“The world's full of it—nothin' but prejudice. I'm
always served the same way, and though I've so much to
do planning the world's good, I can't attend to my own
business, it not only won't support me, but it treats me
with despise and unbecoming freedery. Now, I was used
sinful about my universal language, which every body
can understand, which makes no noise, and which don't
anti-fatigue-anti-consumption omnibus linguister, to be
done by winking and blinking, and cocking your eye, the
way the cat-fishes make Fourth of July orations. I was
going to have it introduced in Congress, to save the expense
of anchovies and more porter; but t'other day I
tried it on a feller in the street; I danced right up to him,
and began canœuvering my daylights to ask him what
o'clock it was, and I'm blow'd if he didn't swear I was
crazy, up fist and stop debate, by putting it to me right
atween the eyes, so that I've been pretty well bung'd up
about the peepers ever since, by a feller too who couldn't
understand a simple idea. That was worse than the kick
a feller gave me in market, because 'cording to first principles
I put a bullowney sassinger into my pocket, and
didn't pay for it. The 'riginal law, which you may see
in children, says when you ain't got no money, the next
best thing is to grab and run. I did grab and run,
but he grabb'd me, and I had to trot back agin, which
always hurts my feelin's and stops the march of mind.
He wouldn't hear me 'lucidate the simple idea, and the
way he hauled out the sassinger, and lent me the loan
of his foot, was werry sewere. It was unsatisfactory and
discombobberative, and made me wish I could find out
the hurtin' principle and have it 'radicated.”
Carriages were driving up to the door of a house brilliantly
illuminated, in one of the fashionable streets, and
the music which pealed from within intimated that the
merry dance was on foot.
“I'm goin' in,” said Fydget—“I'm not afeard—if we
go on first principles we ain't afeard of nothin', and since
they've monopolized my sheer of fun, they can't do less
than give me a shinplaster to go away. My jacket's so
wet with the rain, if I don't get dry I'll be sewed up and
of toggery not imprevious to water. In I go.'
In accordance with this design, he watched his opportunity
and slipped quietly into the gay mansion. Helping
himself liberally to refreshments left in the hall, he looked
in upon the dancers.
“Who-o-ip!” shouted Fydget Fyxington, forgetting
himself in the excitement of the scene—“Who-o-ip!”
added he, as he danced forward with prodigious vigour
and activity, flourishing the eatables with which his hands
were crammed, as if they were a pair of cymbals—
“Whurro-o-o! plank it down—that's your sort!—make
yourselves merry, gals and boys—it's all accordin' to first
principles—whoo-o-o-ya—whoop!—it takes us!”
Direful was the screaming at this formidable apparition
—the fiddles ceased—the waltzers dropped their panting
burdens, and the black band looked pale and aghast.
“Who-o-o-p! go ahead!—come it strong!” continued
Fydget.
But he was again doomed to suffer an ejectment.
“Hustle him out!”
“Give us a `shinplaster' then—them's my terms.”
It would not do—he was compelled to retire shinplasterless;
but it rained so heavily that, nothing daunted, he
marched up the alley-way, re-entered the house through
the garden, and gliding noiselessly into the cellar, turned
a large barrel over which he found there, and getting into
it, went fast asleep “on first principles.”
The company had departed—the servants were assembled
in the kitchen preparatory to retiring for the
night, when an unearthly noise proceeding from the barrel
aforesaid struck upon their astonished ears. It was
Fydget snoring, and his hearers, screaming, fled.
Rallying, however, at the top of the stairs, they procured
destinies of an unfinished building in the vicinity,
and who, having frequently boasted of his valour, felt it
to be a point of honour to act bravely on this occasion.
The sounds continued, and the “investigating committee,”
with Mr. Lynx as chairman, advanced slowly and
with many pauses.
Lynx at last hurriedly thrust his club into the barrel,
and started back to wait the result of the experiment.
“Ouch!” ejaculated a voice from the interior, the word
being one not to be found in the dictionaries, but which,
in common parlance, means that a sensation too acute to
be agreeable has been excited.
“Hey!—hello!—come out of that,” said Lynx, as
soon as his nerves had recovered tranquillity. “You are
in a bad box whoeve you are.”
“Augh!” was the response, “no, I ain't—I'm in a
barrel.”
“No matter,” added Lynx authoritatively; “getting
into another man's barrel unbeknownst to him in the
night-time, is burglary.”
“That,” said Fydget, putting out his head like a terrapin,
at which the women shrieked and retreated, and
Lynx made a demonstration with his club—“that's
because you ain't up to first principles—keep your stick
out of my ribs—I've a plan so there won't be no burglary,
which is this—no man have no more than he can
use, and all other men mind their own business. Then,
this 'ere barrel would be mine while I'm in it, and you'd
be asleep—that's the idea.”
“It's a logo-fogie!” exclaimed Lynx with horror—
“a right down logo-fogie!”
“Ah!” screamed the servants—“a logo-fogie!—how
did it get out?—will it bite?—can't you get a gun?”
“Don't be fools—a logo-fogie is a sort of a man that
don't think as I do—wicked critters all such sort of people
are,” said Lynx. “My lad, I'm pretty clear you're
a logo-fogie—you talk as if your respect for me and
other venerable institutions was tantamount to very little.
You're a leveller I see, and wouldn't mind knocking me
down flat as a pancake, if so be you could run away and
get out of this scrape—you're a 'grarium, and would cut
across the lot like a streak of lightning if you had a
chance.”
“Mr. Lynx,” said the lady of the house from the head
of the stairs,—she had heard from one of the affrighted
maids that a “logo-fogie” had been “captivated,” and
that it could talk “just like a human”—“Mr. Lynx,
don't have any thing to say to him. Take him out, and
hand him over to the police. I'll see that you are recompensed
for your trouble.”
“Come out, then—you're a bad chap—you wouldn't
mind voting against our side at the next election.”
“We don't want elections, I tell you,” said Fydget
coolly, as he walked up stairs—“I've a plan for doing
without elections, and police-officers, and laws—every
man mind his own business, and support me while I oversee
him. I can fix it.”
Having now arrived at the street, Mr. Lynx held him
by the collar, and looked about for a representative of justice
to relieve him of his prize.
“Though I feel as if I was your pa, yet you must be
tried for snoozling in a barrel. Besides, you've no respect
for functionaries, and you sort of want to cut a piece out
of the common veal by your logo-fogieism in wishing to
'bolish laws, and policers, and watchmen, when my
brother's one, and helps to govern the nation when the
turned in, or are at a tea-party. You'll get into prison.”
“We don't want prisons.”
“Yes we do though—what's to become of functionaries
if there ain't any prisons?”
This was rather a puzzling question. Fyxington
paused, and finally said:
“Why, I've a plan.”
“What is it, then—is it logo-fogie?”
“Yes, it upsets existing institutions,” roared Fyxington,
tripping up Mr. Lynx, and making his escape—the
only one of his plans that ever answered the purpose.
| FYDGET FYXINGTON. Charcoal sketches, or, Scenes in a metropolis | |