- end_line
- 4895
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4824
- text
- I found the civil-process enveloping the cigar. When I unrolled the
cigar, I unrolled the civil-process, and the constable standing by
rolled out, with a thick tongue, ‘Take notice!’ and added, in a whisper,
‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it!’
I turned short round upon the gentlemen then and there present in that
bar-room. Said I, ‘Gentlemen, is this an honourable--nay, is this a
lawful way of serving a civil-process? Behold!’
One and all they were of opinion that it was a highly inelegant act in
the constable to take advantage of a gentleman’s lunching on cheese and
porter, to be so uncivil as to slip a civil-process into his hat. It was
ungenerous; it was cruel; for the sudden shock of the thing coming
instanter upon the lunch would impair the proper digestion of the
cheese, which is proverbially not so easy of digestion as blanc-mange.
Arrived home, I read the process, and felt a twinge of melancholy.
Hard world! hard world! Here I am, as good a fellow as ever
lived--hospitable--open-hearted--generous to a fault: and the Fates
forbid that I should possess the fortune to bless the country
with my bounteousness. Nay, while many a stingy curmudgeon rolls in
idle gold, I, heart of nobleness as I am, I have civil-processes
served on me! I bowed my head, and felt forlorn--unjustly
used--abused--unappreciated--in short, miserable.
Hark! like a clarion! yea, like a jolly bolt of thunder with bells to
it--came the all-glorious and defiant crow! Ye gods, how it set me up
again! Right on my pins! Yea, verily on stilts!
Oh, noble cock!
Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Let the world and all aboard of it
go to pot. Do you be jolly, and never say die. What’s the world compared
to you? What is it anyhow but a lump of loam? Do you be jolly!’
Oh, noble cock!
‘But my dear and glorious cock,’ mused I, upon second thought, ‘one
can’t so easily send this world to pot; one can’t so easily be jolly
with civil-processes in his hat or hand.’
Hark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Hang the
process, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash,
go and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be
jolly!’
Now this was the way--through the imperative intimations of the
cock--that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my
debts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at
ease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though
I heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception
in this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my
barns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gaily
mischievous. But no--what ventriloquist could so crow with such an
heroic and celestial crow?
At last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had
sawed and split my wood in March--some five-and-thirty cords of it--and
now he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and
spare, with a long, saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye,
which offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but
undepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat.
This man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all
day long in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke
unless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw--snow, snow, snow. The
saw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day
this man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it
sitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was
reading Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act. I burst
out of doors bare-headed. ‘Good heavens!’ cried I; ‘what are you doing?
Come in. _This_ your dinner!’
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