XX. A PAIR OF SLIPPERS; OR, FALLING WEATHER.

Whenever we look upon the crowded thoroughfare, or regard the large assembly, we are compelled to admit that the infinite variety of form in the human race contributes largely to the picturesque. The eye travels over the diversity of shape and size without fatigue, and renews its strength by turning from one figure to another, when, at each remove, it is sure to find a difference. Satiated with gazing at rotundity, it is refreshed by a glance at lathiness: and, tired with stooping to the lowly, it can mount like a bird to the aspiring head which tops a maypole.

But, while the potency of these pictorial beauties is admitted, it must be conceded that the variations from the true standard, although good for the eyesight, are productive of much inconvenience; and that, to consider the subject like a Benthamite, utility and the general advantage would be promoted if the total amount of flesh, blood, bone, and muscle were more equally distributed. As affairs are at present arranged, it is almost impossible to find a “ready-made coat” that will answer one’s purpose, and a man may stroll through half the shops in town without being able to purchase a pair of boots which he can wear with any degree of comfort. In hanging a lamp, every shop-keeper, who “lights up,” knows that it is a very troublesome matter so to swing it, that, while the short can see the commodities, the tall will not demolish the glass. If an abbreviated “turnippy” man, in the goodness of his heart and in articulo mortis, bequeaths his wardrobe to a long and gaunt friend, of what service is the posthumous present? It is available merely as new clothing for the juveniles, or as something toward another kitchen carpet. Many a martial spirit is obliged to content himself with civic employment, although a mere bottle of fire and wrath, because heroism is enlisted by inches, and not by degree.

If under “five foot six,” Cæsar himself could find no favour in the eye of the recruiting-sergeant, and Alexander the Great would be allowed to bestride no Bucephalus in a dragoon regiment of modern times. Thus, both they who get too much, and they who get too little, in Dame Nature’s apportionment bill, as well as those who, though abundantly endowed, are not well made up, have divers reasons for grumbling, and for wishing that a more perfect uniformity prevailed.

Some of the troubles which arise from giving a man more than his share in altitude, find illustration in the subjoined narrative:

Linkum Langcale is a subject in extenso. He is, to use the words of the poet, suggested by his name,

“. . . . . . A bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out:”

and, in speaking of him, it is not easy to be brief. Linkum is entirely too long for his own comfort—something short—if the word short may be used in this connection—something short of the height of the Titans of old, who pelted Saturn with brickbats; but how much, has never yet been ascertained, none of his acquaintances being sufficiently acquainted with trigonometry to determine the fact. He is one of those men who, like the gentle Marcia, “tower above their sex,” and must always be called down to their dinner, as no information can be imparted to them unless it be hallooed up, and in conversing with whom, it is always necessary to begin by hailing the maintop.

There is not, however, more material in Linkum than enough for a man of ordinary length. The fault is in his not being properly made up. He is abominably wire-drawn—stretched out, as Shakspeare says, almost to the crack of doom. It is clear that there has been an attempt to make too much of him, but the frame of the idea has not been well filled out. He is the streak of a Colossus, and he resembles the willow wand at which Locksley shot his gray goose shaft in the lists of Ashby de la Zouche. The consequence is, that Linkum is a crank vessel. If he wore a feather in his cap, he would be capsized at every corner; and as it is, he finds it very difficult to get along on a windy day, without a paving stone in each coat-pocket to preserve the balance of power. He is, however, of a convivial nature, and will not refuse his glass, notwithstanding the aptitude of alcohol to ascend into the brain, and so to encumber it as to render a perpendicular position troublesome to men shorter than himself. When in this condition, his troubles are numberless, and among other matters, he finds it very difficult to get a clear fall, there being in compact cities very little room to spare for the accommodation of long men tumbling down in the world.

One evening Linkum walked forth to a convivial meeting, and supped with a set of jolly companions. Late at night a rain came on, which froze as it fell, and soon made the city one universal slide, sufficiently “glip” for all purposes, without the aid of saw-dust. Of Linkum’s sayings and doings at the social board, no record is preserved; but it is inferred that his amusements were not of a nature to qualify him for the safe performance of a journey so slippery as that which it was necessary to undertake to reach home. No lamps were lighted, they who were abroad being under the necessity of supposing the moonshine, and of seeing their way as they walked, or of gathering themselves up, when they fell, by the lantern of imagination.

“Good night, fellers,” said Linkum, at the top of the steps, as the door closed after him.

He pulled his hat over his eyes determinedly, buttoned his coat with resolution, and sucked at his cigar with that iron energy peculiar to men about to set forth on their way home on a cold, stormy night. The fire of the cigar reflected from his nose was the only illumination to be seen; and Linkum, putting his hands deep into his pockets, kept his position on the first step of the six which were between him and the pavement.

“I’ve no doubt,” said he, as he puffed forth volumes of smoke, and seemed to cogitate deeply—“I’ve not the slightest doubt that this is as beautiful a night as ever was; only it’s so dark you can’t see the pattern of it. One night is pretty much like another night in the dark; but it’s a great advantage to a good-looking evening, if the lamps are lit, so you can twig the stars and the moonshine. The fact is, that in this ’ere city, we do grow the blackest moons, and the hardest moons to find, I ever did see. Sometimes I’m most disposed to send the bellman after ’em—or get a full-blooded pinter to pint ’em out, while I hold a candle to see which way he pints. It wouldn’t be a bad notion on sich occasions to ask the man in the steeple to ring which way the moon is. Lamps is lamps, and moons is moons, in a business pint of view, but practically they ain’t much if the wicks ain’t a-fire. When the luminaries are, as I may say, in the raw, it’s bad for me. I can’t see the ground as perforately as little fellers, and every dark night I’m sure to get a hyst—either a forred hyst, or a backerd hyst, or some sort of a hyst—but more backerds than forrerds, ’specially in winter. One of the most unfeeling tricks I know of, is the way some folks have got of laughing out, yaw-haw! when they see a gentleman ketching a riggler hyst—a long gentleman, for instance, with his legs in the air, and his noddle splat down upon the cold bricks. A hyst of itself is bad enough, without being sniggered at: first, your sconce gets a crack; then, you see all sorts of stars, and have free admission to the fireworks; then, you scramble up, feeling as if you had no head on your shoulders, and as if it wasn’t you, but some confounded disagreeable feller in your clothes; yet the jacksnipes all grin, as if the misfortunes of human nature was only a poppet-show. I wouldn’t mind it, if you could get up and look as if you didn’t care. But a man can’t rise, after a royal hyst, without letting on he feels flat. In such cases, however, sympathy is all gammon; and as for sensibility of a winter’s day, people keep it all for their own noses, and can’t be coaxed to retail it by the small.”

Linkum paused in his prophetic dissertation upon “hysts”—the popular pronunciation, in these parts, of the word hoist, which is used—quasi lucus a non lucendo—to convey the idea of the most complete tumble which man can experience. A fall, for instance, is indeterminate. It may be an easy slip down—a gentle visitation of mother earth; but a hyst is a rapid, forcible performance, which may be done, as Linkum observes, either backward or forward, but of necessity with such violence as to knock the breath out of the body, or it is unworthy of the noble appellation of hyst. It is an apt, but figurative mode of expression, and it is often carried still further; for people sometimes say, “lower him up, and hyst him down.”

Our hero held on firmly to the railing, and peered keenly into the darkness, without discovering any object on which his vision could rest. The gloom was substantial. It required sharper eyes than his to bore a hole in it. The wind was up, and the storm continued to coat the steps and pavements with a sheet of ice.

“It’s raining friz potatoes,” observed Linkum; “I feel ’em, though I can’t see ’em, bumping the end of my nose; so I must hurry home as fast as I can.”

Heedless and hapless youth! He made a vain attempt to descend, but, slipping, he came in a sitting posture upon the top step, and, in that attitude, flew down like lightning—bump! bump! bump! The impetus he had acquired prevented him from stopping on the sidewalk, notwithstanding his convulsive efforts to clutch the icy bricks, and he skuted into the gutter, whizzing over the curbstone, and splashing into the water, like a young Niagara.

A deep silence ensued, broken solely by the pattering of the rain and the bowling of the wind. Linkum was an exhausted receiver; the hyst was perfect, the breath being completely knocked out of him.

“Laws-a-massy!” at length he panted, “ketching” breath at intervals, and twisting about as if in pain; “my eyes! sich a hyst! Sich a quantity of hysts all in one! The life’s almost bumped out of me, and I’m jammed up so tight, I don’t believe I’m so tall by six inches as I was before. I’m druv up and clinched, and I’ll have to get tucks in my trousers.”

Linkum sat still, ruminating on the curtailment of his fair proportions, and made no effort to rise. The door soon opened again, and Mr. Broad Brevis came forth, at which a low, suppressed chuckle was uttered by Linkum, as he looked over his shoulder, anticipating “a quantity of hysts all in one” for the new-comer, whose figure, however—short and stout—was much better calculated for the operation than Linkum’s. But Brevis seemed to suspect that the sliding was good, and the skating magnificent.

“No, you don’t!” quoth he, as he tried the step with one foot, and recovered himself; “I haven’t seen the Alleghany Portage and inclined planes for nothing. It takes me to diminish the friction, and save the wear and tear.”

So saying, he quietly tucked up his coat-tails, and sitting down upon the mat, which he grasped with both hands, gave himself a gentle impulse, crying “All aboard!” and slid slowly but majestically down. As he came to the plain sailing across the pavement, he twanged forth “Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta-ra-tra-a-a!” in excellent imitation of the post-horn, and brought up against Linkum. “Clear the course for the express mail, or I’ll report you to the department!” roared Brevis, trumpeting the “alarum,” so well known to all who have seen a tragedy—“Tra-tretra-ta-ra-tra-a-a!”

“That’s queer fun, anyhow,” said a careful wayfarer, turning the corner, with lantern in hand, and sock on foot, who, after a short parley, was induced to set the gentlemen on their pins. First planting Brevis against the pump, who sang, “Let me lean on thee,” from the Sonnambula, in prime style, he undertook to lift up Linkum.

“Well,” observed the stranger, “this is a chap without no end to him—he’d be pretty long a drowning anyhow. If there was many more like him in the gutters, it would be better to get a windlass, and wind ’em up. I never seed a man with so much slack. The corporation ought to buy him, starch him up stiff, cut a hole for a clock in his hat, and use him for a steeple; only Downing wouldn’t like to trust himself on the top of such a ricketty concern. Neighbour, shall I fetch the Humane Society’s apparatus?”

“No—I ain’t drownded, only bumped severe. The curbstones have touched my feelings. I’m all over like a map—red, blue, and green.”

“Now,” said their friendly assistant, grinning at the joke, and at the recompense he had received for the job, “now, you two hook on to one another like Siameses, and mosey. You’ve only got to tumble one a top of t’other, and it won’t hurt. Tortle off—it’s slick going—’specially if you’re going down. Push ahead!” continued he, as he hitched them together; and away they went, a pair of slippers, arm in arm. Many were their tumbles and many their mischances before they reached their selected resting-place.

“I can’t stand this,” said Linkum to his companion, as they were slipping and falling; “but it’s mostly owing to my being so tall. I wish I was razee’d, and then it wouldn’t happen. The awning posts almost knock the head off me; I’m always tumbling over wheelbarrows, dogs, and children, because, if I look down, I’m certain to knock my noddle against something above. It’s a complete nuisance to be so tall. Beds are too short; if you go to a tea-fight, the people are always tumbling over your trotters, and breaking their noses, which is what young ladies ain’t partial to; and if you tipple too much toddy of a slippery night—about as easy a thing to do as you’d wish to try—you’re sure to get a hyst a square long—just such a one as I’ve had. If I’d thought of it, I could have said the multiplication-table while I was going the figure. Stumpy chaps, such as you, ain’t got no troubles in this world.”

“That’s all you know about it,” puffed Brevis, as Linkum alternately jerked him from his feet, and then caused him to slide in the opposite direction, with his heels ploughing the ice, like a shaft-horse holding back: “phew! That’s all you know about it—stumpies have troubles.”

“I can’t borrow coats,” added Linkum, soliloquizing, “because I don’t like cuffs at the elbows. I can’t borrow pants, because it isn’t the fashion to wear knee-breeches, and all my stockings are socks. I can’t hide when anybody owes me a lambasting. You can see me a mile. When I sit by the fire, I can’t get near enough to warm my body, without burning my knees; and in a stage-coach, there’s no room between the benches, and the way you get the cramp—don’t mention it.”

“I don’t know nothing about all these things; but to imagine I was a tall chap—”

“Don’t try; you’ll hurt yourself, for it’s a great stretch of imagination for a little feller to do that.”

After which amicable colloquy, nothing more was heard of them, except that, before retiring to rest, they chuckled over the idea that the coming spring would sweat the ice to death for the annoyance it had caused them. But ever while they live, will they remember “the night of hysts.”