always deemed him the victim of two evil powers--ambition and
indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the
duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly
professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal
documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous
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 anything, 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