- end_line
- 687
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 622
- text
- "But that must be in the summer only, old boy. How about winter, when
the cold Cossacks come clattering and jingling? How about winter, old
boy?"
"Den dis poor old darkie shakes werry bad, I tell you, sar. Oh sar, oh!
don't speak ob der winter," he added, with a reminiscent shiver,
shuffling off into the thickest of the crowd, like a half-frozen black
sheep nudging itself a cozy berth in the heart of the white flock.
Thus far not very many pennies had been given him, and, used at last to
his strange looks, the less polite passengers of those in that part of
the boat began to get their fill of him as a curious object; when
suddenly the negro more than revived their first interest by an
expedient which, whether by chance or design, was a singular temptation
at once to _diversion_ and charity, though, even more than his crippled
limbs, it put him on a canine footing. In short, as in appearance he
seemed a dog, so now, in a merry way, like a dog he began to be treated.
Still shuffling among the crowd, now and then he would pause, throwing
back his head and, opening his mouth like an elephant for tossed apples
at a menagerie; when, making a space before him, people would have a
bout at a strange sort of pitch-penny game, the cripple's mouth being at
once target and purse, and he hailing each expertly-caught copper with a
cracked bravura from his tambourine. To be the subject of alms-giving is
trying, and to feel in duty bound to appear cheerfully grateful under
the trial, must be still more so; but whatever his secret emotions, he
swallowed them, while still retaining each copper this side the
oesophagus. And nearly always he grinned, and only once or twice did
he wince, which was when certain coins, tossed by more playful almoners,
came inconveniently nigh to his teeth, an accident whose unwelcomeness
was not unedged by the circumstance that the pennies thus thrown proved
buttons.
While this game of charity was yet at its height, a limping,
gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person--it may be some discharged custom-house
officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had
concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself
miserable for life, either by hating or suspecting everything and
everybody--this shallow unfortunate, after sundry sorry observations of
the negro, began to croak out something about his deformity being a
sham, got up for financial purposes, which immediately threw a damp upon
the frolic benignities of the pitch-penny players.
But that these suspicions came from one who himself on a wooden leg went
halt, this did not appear to strike anybody present. That cripples,
above all men should be companionable, or, at least, refrain from
picking a fellow-limper to pieces, in short, should have a little
sympathy in common misfortune, seemed not to occur to the company.
Meantime, the negro's countenance, before marked with even more than
patient good-nature, drooped into a heavy-hearted expression, full of
the most painful distress. So far abased beneath its proper physical
level, that Newfoundland-dog face turned in passively hopeless appeal,
as if instinct told it that the right or the wrong might not have
overmuch to do with whatever wayward mood superior intelligences might
yield to.
But instinct, though knowing, is yet a teacher set below reason, which
itself says, in the grave words of Lysander in the comedy, after Puck
has made a sage of him with his spell:--
"The will of man is by his reason swayed."
So that, suddenly change as people may, in their dispositions, it is not
always waywardness, but improved judgment, which, as in Lysander's case,
or the present, operates with them.
- title
- Chunk 2