- description
- # Seeking help from a second friend and encountering his wife
## Overview
This subsection, titled "Seeking help from a second friend and encountering his wife," is an excerpt from a larger work, likely a novel. It details a specific event within a narrative, focusing on the protagonist's unsuccessful attempt to gain assistance from a friend and the subsequent negative interaction with the friend's wife. The text spans from line 3498 to 3533.
## Context
This section is part of [CHAPTER XIII. HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOUSE, WITH VARIOUS ADVENTURES FOLLOWING.](arke:01KG8AJJ261FWJ1RK528BTY9AX), which is contained within the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection. The text was extracted from the file `israel_potter.txt`. This event follows the protagonist's previous attempt to procure new clothes from a farmer, as described in the preceding subsection, [Attempting to procure new clothes from the first farmer](arke:01KG8AK5N3S6KBX01MT3TVY72E).
## Contents
The narrative describes the protagonist, Israel, approaching a second friend's house late at night. His attempts to wake the friend are unsuccessful; instead, he rouses the friend's wife. She reacts with hostility, scolding Israel for his appearance and his request for charity. Israel's clothing is in disrepair, with a significant tear in his breeches. He pleads with the wife to at least give him her husband's breeches in exchange for his own and money, but she refuses and threatens him. The interaction ends with the wife misunderstanding Israel's request and becoming further incensed.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:44.591Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Seeking help from a second friend and encountering his wife
- end_line
- 3533
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:55.385Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3498
- text
- In great dolor at this unhappy repulse, Israel trudged on in the
moonlight some three miles to the house of another friend, who also had
once succored him in extremity. This man proved a very sound sleeper.
Instead of succeeding in rousing him by his knocking, Israel but
succeeded in rousing his wife, a person not of the greatest amiability.
Raising the sash, and seeing so shocking a pauper before her, the woman
upbraided him with shameless impropriety in asking charity at dead of
night, in a dress so improper too. Looking down at his deplorable
velveteens, Israel discovered that his extensive travels had produced a
great rent in one loin of the rotten old breeches, through which a
whitish fragment protruded.
Remedying this oversight as well as he might, he again implored the
woman to wake her husband.
“That I shan’t!” said the woman, morosely. “Quit the premises, or I’ll
throw something on ye.”
With that she brought some earthenware to the window, and would have
fulfilled her threat, had not Israel prudently retreated some paces.
Here he entreated the woman to take mercy on his plight, and since she
would not waken her husband, at least throw to him (Israel) her
husband’s breeches, and he would leave the price of them, with his own
breeches to boot, on the sill of the door.
“You behold how sadly I need them,” said he; “for heaven’s sake
befriend me.”
“Quit the premises!” reiterated the woman.
“The breeches, the breeches! here is the money,” cried Israel, half
furious with anxiety.
“Saucy cur,” cried the woman, somehow misunderstanding him; “do you
cunningly taunt me with _wearing_ the breeches’? begone!”
- title
- Seeking help from a second friend and encountering his wife