brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless.
When I consider how, amid the stillness of my chambers, Nippers would
sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table,
spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk, and move it, and jerk
it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the table were a
perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him, I plainly
perceive that, for Nippers, brandy-and-water were altogether
superfluous.

It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar
cause--indigestion--the irritability and consequent nervousness of
Nippers were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon he
was comparatively mild. So that, Turkey's paroxysms only coming on about
twelve o'clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time.
Their fits relieved each other, like guards. When Nippers's was on,
Turkey's was off; and _vice versa_. This was a good natural arrangement,
under the circumstances.

Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad, some twelve years old. His,
father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of
a cart, before he died. So he sent him to my office, as student at law,
errand-boy, cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week. He
had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much. Upon
inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various
sorts of nuts. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth, the whole noble
science of the law was contained in a nut-shell. Not the least among the
employments of Ginger Nut, as well as one which he discharged with the
most alacrity, was his duty as cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and
Nippers. Copying law-papers being proverbially a dry, husky sort of
business, my two scriveners were fain to moisten their mouths very often