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 of 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 by 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 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' was
on, Turkey's was off; and _vice versa_. This was a good natural
arrangement und