 | Life and sayings of Mrs. Partington and others
of the family |  |
THE POOR PRINTER.
THE poor printer — poor in
purse, we mean — reduced
to penury and rags, and
asking alms about the
printing-offices, is a melancholy
sight. There is
enough in one such spectacle
to give any man the
“double-breasted horrors”
for a whole day. There is
a most woe-begone, miserable
hopelessness in him,
as he asks your aid in the name of his profession, — of
printing, — the noble art that he, perhaps, may have
honored in his better days. Bad luck, or worse liquor, —
often symptoms of the latter predominate, — combined
with a want of self-respect, have reduced him to his
present condition. He is no common beggar. There is
a something in his tone, as he asks for your aid, that tells
plainly it is not his true vocation; that he is forcing his
nature into a most unnatural current in asking for assistance.
He has none of the small lies that appear ready-framed
on the lips of common beggars. No volcanoes
have poured their burning lavas on his head or other
property; no furious tornadoes have swept away his
earthly hopes and homestead, and driven him forth a
in other lands to give him a fortune here. But he
stands before you, and his appearance pleads for him.
He looks like a low case, dusty and pied, or a form
picked for sorts and squabbling under the accumulation
of indulged dust. There is persuasion in his seedy coat,
buttoned to the chin — a coat in which a dim gentility
struggles to overcome the poverty-clouds or cobwebs that
mar it; there is persuasion in the hat, that venerable tile,
whose form of three fashions past indicates certainly as
an almanac the date of the declension of his golden days;
there is persuasion in his familiar look at things, and the
air that says, “This is nothing new to me — I 've seen
all this before;” there is persuasion much more in the
tone of the voice that asks the gift, as if it were a loan,
or the return of some money in your keeping for him.
There is no servility in his asking, and his story is a
direct recital of his troubles. He is sick, has a disorder
in his head, his wife is dead, his hope has all fled, for days
has n't seen a bed, nor had one mouthful of bread, and is
quite famish-ed. What a recital! and you cry, “Nuf
ced!” and the quarter comes at once from your yielding
purse. What a comfortable reflection it is, as we place
the coin in his extended hand! and it forces home a question
of great moment, drawn from a contingency that grows,
some think, out of the nature of the art, “Whose turn
will come next?” and the richest of the journeymen feels
more humble as he ponders on what may happen.
| Life and sayings of Mrs. Partington and others
of the family | |