Martin Chuzzlewit
and resting his chin on the top of his stick, ‘the usual amount of
misery and poverty and ignorance and crime, to be located in the bosom
of the great Republic. Well, sir! let ‘em come on in shiploads from the
old country. When vessels are about to founder, the rats are said to
leave ‘em. There is considerable of truth, I find, in that remark.’
‘The old ship will keep afloat a year or two longer yet, perhaps,’ said
Martin with a smile, partly occasioned by what the gentleman said,
and partly by his manner of saying it, which was odd enough for he
emphasised all the small words and syllables in his discourse, and left
the others to take care of themselves; as if he thought the larger parts
of speech could be trusted alone, but the little ones required to be
constantly looked after.
‘Hope is said by the poet, sir,’ observed the gentleman, ‘to be the
nurse of young Desire.’
Martin signified that he had heard of the cardinal virtue in question
serving occasionally in that domestic capacity.
‘She will not rear her infant in the present instance, sir, you’ll
find,’ observed the gentleman.
‘Time will show,’ said Martin.
The gentleman nodded his head gravely; and said, ‘What is your name,
sir?’
Martin told him.
‘How old are you, sir?’
Martin told him.
‘What is your profession, sir?’
Martin told him that also.
‘What is your destination, sir?’ inquired the gentleman.
‘Really,’ said Martin laughing, ‘I can’t satisfy you in that particular,
for I don’t know it myself.’
‘Yes?’ said the gentleman.
‘No,’ said Martin.
The gentleman adjusted his cane under his left arm, and took a more
deliberate and complete survey of Martin than he had yet had leisure to
make. When he had completed his inspection, he put out his right hand,
shook Martin’s hand, and said:
‘My name is Colonel Diver, sir. I am the Editor of the New York Rowdy
Journal.’
Martin received the communication with that degree of respect which an
announcement so distinguished appeared to demand.
‘The New York Rowdy Journal, sir,’ resumed the colonel, ‘is, as I expect
you know, the organ of our aristocracy in this city.’
‘Oh! there IS an aristocracy here, then?’ said Martin. ‘Of what is it
composed?’
‘Of intelligence, sir,’ replied the colonel; ‘of intelligence and
virtue. And of their necessary consequence in this republic--dollars,
sir.’
Martin was very glad to hear this, feeling well assured that if
intelligence and virtue led, as a matter of course, to the acquisition
of dollars, he would speedily become a great capitalist. He was about
to express the gratification such news afforded him, when he was
interrupted by the captain of the ship, who came up at the moment to
shake hands with the colonel; and who, seeing a well-dressed stranger on
the deck (for Martin had thrown aside his cloak), shook hands with him
also. This was an unspeakable relief to Martin, who, in spite of the
acknowledged supremacy of Intelligence and virtue in that happy country,
would have been deeply mortified to appear before Colonel Diver in the
poor character of a steerage passenger.
‘Well cap’en!’ said the colonel.
‘Well colonel,’ cried the captain. ‘You’re looking most uncommon bright,
sir. I can hardly realise its being you, and that’s a fact.’
‘A good passage, cap’en?’ inquired the colonel, taking him aside,
‘Well now! It was a pretty spanking run, sir,’ said, or rather sung, the
captain, who was a genuine New Englander; ‘considerin’ the weather.’
‘Yes?’ said the colonel.
‘Well! It was, sir,’ said the captain. ‘I’ve just now sent a boy up to
your office with the passenger-list, colonel.’
‘You haven’t got another boy to spare, p’raps, cap’en?’ said the
colonel, in a tone almost amounting to severity.
‘I guess there air a dozen if you want ‘em, colonel,’ said the captain.
‘One moderate big ‘un could convey a dozen champagne, perhaps,’ observed
the colonel, musing, ‘to my office. You said a spanking run, I think?’
‘Well, so I did,’ was the reply.
‘It’s very nigh, you know,’ observed the colonel. ‘I’m glad it was a
spanking run, cap’en. Don’t mind about quarts if you’re short of ‘em.
The boy can as well bring four-and-twenty pints, and travel twice as
once.--A first-rate spanker, cap’en, was it? Yes?’
‘A most e--tarnal spanker,’ said the skipper.
‘I admire at your good fortun, cap’en. You might loan me a corkscrew at
the same time, and half-a-dozen glasses if you liked. However bad the
elements combine against my country’s noble packet-ship, the Screw,
sir,’ said the colonel, turning to Martin, and drawing a flourish on
the surface of the deck with his cane, ‘her passage either way is almost
certain to eventuate a spanker!’
The captain, who had the Sewer below at that moment, lunching
expensively in one cabin, while the amiable Stabber was drinking himself
into a state of blind madness in another, took a cordial leave of his
friend the colonel, and hurried away to dispatch the champagne; well
knowing (as it afterwards appeared) that if he failed to conciliate the
editor of the Rowdy Journal, that potentate would denounce him and his
ship in large capitals before he was a day older; and would probably
assault the memory of his mother also, who had not been dead more than
twenty years. The colonel being again left alone with Martin, checked
him as he was moving away, and offered in consideration of his being an
Englishman, to show him the town and to introduce him, if such were his
desire, to a genteel boarding-house. But before they entered on these
proceedings (he said), he would beseech the honour of his company at the
office of the Rowdy Journal, to partake of a bottle of champagne of his
own importation.
All this was so extremely kind and hospitable, that Martin, though it
was quite early in the morning, readily acquiesced. So, instructing
Mark, who was deeply engaged with his friend and her three children,
that when he had done assisting them, and had cleared the baggage,
he was to wait for further orders at the Rowdy Journal Office, Martin
accompanied his new friend on shore.
They made their way as they best could through the melancholy crowd of
emigrants upon the wharf, who, grouped about their beds and boxes, with
the bare ground below them and the bare sky above, might have fallen
from another planet, for anything they knew of the country; and walked
for some short distance along a busy street, bounded on one side by the
quays and shipping; and on the other by a long row of staring red-brick
storehouses and offices, ornamented with more black boards and white
letters, and more white boards and black letters, than Martin had ever
seen before, in fifty times the space. Presently they turned up a narrow
street, and presently into other narrow streets, until at last they
stopped before a house whereon was painted in great characters, ‘ROWDY
JOURNAL.’
The colonel, who had walked the whole way with one hand in his breast,
his head occasionally wagging from side to side, and his hat thrown back
upon his ears, like a man who was oppressed to inconvenience by a sense
of his own greatness, led the way up a dark and dirty flight of stairs
into a room of similar character, all littered and bestrewn with odds
and ends of newspapers and other crumpled fragments, both in proof and
manuscript. Behind a mangy old writing-table in this apartment sat a
figure with a stump of a pen in its mouth and a great pair of scissors
in its right hand, clipping and slicing at a file of Rowdy Journals;
and it was such a laughable figure that Martin had some difficulty in
preserving his gravity, though conscious of the close observation of
Colonel Diver.
The individual who sat clipping and slicing as aforesaid at the Rowdy
Journals, was a small young gentleman of very juvenile appearance, and
unwholesomely pale in the face; partly, perhaps, from intense thought,
but partly, there is no doubt, from the excessive use of tobacco, which
he was at that moment chewing vigorously. He wore his shirt-collar
turned down over a black ribbon; and his lank hair, a fragile crop, was
not only smoothed and parted back from his brow, that none of the Poetry
of his aspect might be lost, but had, here and there, been grubbed up by
the roots; which accounted for his loftiest developments being somewhat
pimply. He had that order of nose on which the envy of mankind has
bestowed the appellation ‘snub,’ and it was very much turned up at the
end, as with a lofty scorn. Upon the upper lip of this young gentleman
were tokens of a sandy down; so very, very smooth and scant, that,
though encouraged to the utmost, it looked more like a recent trace of
gingerbread than the fair promise of a moustache; and this conjecture,
his apparently tender age went far to strengthen. He was intent upon
his work. Every time he snapped the great pair of scissors, he made
a corresponding motion with his jaws, which gave him a very terrible
appearance.
Martin was not long in determining within himself that this must be
Colonel Diver’s son; the hope of the family, and future mainspring of
the Rowdy Journal. Indeed he had begun to say that he presumed this
was the colonel’s little boy, and that it was very pleasant to see
him playing at Editor in all the guilelessness of childhood, when the
colonel proudly interposed and said:
‘My War Correspondent, sir--Mr Jefferson Brick!’
Martin could not help starting at this unexpected announcement, and the
consciousness of the irretrievable mistake he had nearly made.
Mr Brick seemed pleased with the sensation he produced upon the
stranger, and shook hands with him, with an air of patronage designed
to reassure him, and to let him blow that there was no occasion to be
frightened, for he (Brick) wouldn’t hurt him.
‘You have heard of Jefferson Brick, I see, sir,’ quoth the colonel,
with a smile. ‘England has heard of Jefferson Brick. Europe has heard of
Jefferson Brick. Let me see. When did you leave England, sir?’
‘Five weeks ago,’ said Martin.
‘Five weeks ago,’ repeated the colonel, thoughtfully; as he took his
seat upon the table, and swung his legs. ‘Now let me ask you, sir which
of Mr Brick’s articles had become at that time the most obnoxious to the
British Parliament and the Court of Saint James’s?’
‘Upon my word,’ said Martin, ‘I--’
‘I have reason to know, sir,’ interrupted the colonel, ‘that the
aristocratic circles of your country quail before the name of Jefferson
Brick. I should like to be informed, sir, from your lips, which of his
sentiments has struck the deadliest blow--’
‘At the hundred heads of the Hydra of Corruption now grovelling in the
dust beneath the lance of Reason, and spouting up to the universal arch
above us, its sanguinary gore,’ said Mr Brick, putting on a little blue
cloth cap with a glazed front, and quoting his last article.
‘The libation of freedom, Brick’--hinted the colonel.
‘--Must sometimes be quaffed in blood, colonel,’ cried Brick. And when
he said ‘blood,’ he gave the great pair of scissors a sharp snap, as if
THEY said blood too, and were quite of his opinion.
This done, they both looked at Martin, pausing for a reply.
‘Upon my life,’ said Martin, who had by this time quite recovered his
usual coolness, ‘I can’t give you any satisfactory information about it;
for the truth is that I--’
‘Stop!’ cried the colonel, glancing sternly at his war correspondent and
giving his head one shake after every sentence. ‘That you never heard of
Jefferson Brick, sir. That you never read Jefferson Brick, sir. That
you never saw the Rowdy Journal, sir. That you never knew, sir, of its
mighty influence upon the cabinets of Europe. Yes?’
‘That’s what I was about to observe, certainly,’ said Martin.