testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind
together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions,
hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a
continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked.
Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this
table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits
of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite
adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting paper. But no invention
would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table
lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote there like a
man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk:--then he
declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered
the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then there
was a sore aching in his back. In short, the truth of the matter was,
Nippers knew not what he wanted. Or, if he wanted any thing, it was to
be rid of a scrivener's table altogether. Among the manifestations of
his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from
certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his
clients. Indeed I was aware that not only was he, at times,
considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little
business at the Justices' courts, and was not unknown on the steps of
the Tombs. I have good reason to believe, however, that one individual
who called upon him at my chambers, and who, with a grand air, he
insisted was his client, was no other than a dun, and the alleged
title-deed, a bill. But with all his failings, and the annoyances he
caused me, Nippers, like his compatriot Turkey, was a very useful man to
me; wrote a neat, swift hand; and, when he chose, was not deficient in a
gentlemanly sort of deportment. Added to this, he always dressed in a
gentlemanly sort of way; and so, incidentally, reflected credit upon my
chambers. Whereas with respect to Turkey, I had much ado to keep him