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- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
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- 741
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- urged against gray hairs. Old age—even if it blot the page—is
honorable. With submission, sir, we _both_ are getting old.”
This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all
events, I saw that go he would not. So, I made up my mind to let him
stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it that, during the afternoon,
he had to do with my less important papers.
Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the
whole, rather piratical-looking young man, of about five and twenty. I
always deemed him the victim of two evil powers—ambition and
indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the
duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly
professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal
documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous
testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind
together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions,
hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by
a continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked.
Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get
this table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts,
bits of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite
adjustment, by final pieces of folded blotting-paper. But no invention
would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table
lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote, there like a
man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk, then he
declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered
the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then there
was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the matter was,
Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted anything, it was to
be rid of a scrivener’s table altogether. Among the manifestations of
his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from
certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his
clients. Indeed, I was aware that not only was he, at times,
considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little
business at the Justices’ courts, and was not unknown on the steps of
the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual
who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he
insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged
title-deed, a bill. But, with all his failings, and the annoyances he
caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man
to me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient
in a gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed
in a gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit
upon my chambers. Whereas, with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to
keep him from being a reproach to me. His clothes were apt to look
oily, and smell of eating-houses. He wore his pantaloons very loose and
baggy in summer. His coats were execrable; his hat not to be handled.
But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his
natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led
him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another
matter. Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but with no effect.
The truth was, I suppose, that a man with so small an income could not
afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the
same time. As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for
red ink. One winter day, I presented Turkey with a highly
respectable-looking coat of my own—a padded gray coat, of a most
comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the
neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his
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