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- little too much so, in spying heresy."
"Well," after an astonished pause, "for an unaccountable pair, you and
the herb-doctor ought to yoke together."
So saying, the bachelor was eying him rather sharply, when he with the
brass plate recalled him to the discussion by a hint, not unflattering,
that he (the man with the brass plate) was all anxiety to hear him
further on the subject of servants.
"About that matter," exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off
at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days,
coming to the conclusion--one derived from an immense hereditary
experience--see what Horace and others of the ancients say of
servants--coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the
human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. Can't be
trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit
dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions--carding machines,
horseshoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines,
apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving
machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the
Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that
refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried
by-gone, a superseded fossil. Shortly prior to which glorious time, I
doubt not that a price will be put upon their peltries as upon the
knavish 'possums,' especially the boys. Yes, sir (ringing his rifle down
on the deck), I rejoice to think that the day is at hand, when, prompted
to it by law, I shall shoulder this gun and go out a boy-shooting."
"Oh, now! Lord, Lord, Lord!--But _our_ office, respected sir, conducted
as I ventured to observe----"
"No, sir," bristlingly settling his stubble chin in his coon-skins.
"Don't try to oil me; the herb-doctor tried that. My experience, carried
now through a course--worse than salivation--a course of five and thirty
boys, proves to me that boyhood is a natural state of rascality."
"Save us, save us!"
"Yes, sir, yes. My name is Pitch; I stick to what I say. I speak from
fifteen years' experience; five and thirty boys; American, Irish,
English, German, African, Mulatto; not to speak of that China boy sent
me by one who well knew my perplexities, from California; and that
Lascar boy from Bombay. Thug! I found him sucking the embryo life from
my spring eggs. All rascals, sir, every soul of them; Caucasian or
Mongol. Amazing the endless variety of rascality in human nature of the
juvenile sort. I remember that, having discharged, one after another,
twenty-nine boys--each, too, for some wholly unforeseen species of
viciousness peculiar to that one peculiar boy--I remember saying to
myself: Now, then, surely, I have got to the end of the list, wholly
exhausted it; I have only now to get me a boy, any boy different from
those twenty-nine preceding boys, and he infallibly shall be that
virtuous boy I have so long been seeking. But, bless me! this thirtieth
boy--by the way, having at the time long forsworn your intelligence
offices, I had him sent to me from the Commissioners of Emigration, all
the way from New York, culled out carefully, in fine, at my particular
request, from a standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all
nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River
island--I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his
deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner,
why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent,
too--quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!'
always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too,
combining a filial affection with a menial respect. Took such warm,
singular interest in my affairs. Wanted to be considered one of the
family--sort of adopted son of mine, I suppose. Of a morning, when I
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