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 from being a reproach
to me. His clothes were apt to look oily, and smell of eating-houses. He
wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer. His coats were
execrable; his hat not to be handled. But while the hat was a thing of
indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a
dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered
the room, yet his coat was another matter. Concerning his coats, I
reasoned with him; but with no effect. The truth was, I suppose, that a
man with so small an income could not afford to sport such a lustrous
face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time. As Nippers once
observed, Turkey's money went chiefly for red ink. One winter day, I
presented Turkey with a highly respectable-looking coat of my own--a
padded gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned
straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate
the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons.
But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and
blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him--upon the same
principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a
rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat.
It made him insolent. He was a man whom prosperity harmed.

Though, concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey, I had my own
private surmises, yet, touching Nippers, I was well persuaded that,
whatever might be his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a
temperate young man. But, indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his
vintner, and, at his birth, charged him so thoroughly with an irritable,
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