Short Fiction, Herman Melville [read out loud books TXT] 📗

the dun, who of late had commenced a civil-process against me. The way the process was served was a most insulting one. In a private room I had been enjoying myself in the village tavern over a bottle of Philadelphia porter, and some Herkimer cheese, and a roll, and having apprised the landlord, who was a friend of mine, that I would settle with him when I received my next remittances, stepped to the peg where I had hung my hat in the barroom, to get a choice cigar I had left in the hall, when lo! I found the civil-process enveloping the cigar. When I unrolled the cigar, I unrolled the civil-process, and the constable standing by rolled out, with a thick tongue, “Take notice!” and added, in a whisper, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

I turned short round upon the gentlemen then and there present in that barroom. Said I, “Gentlemen, is this an honorable⁠—nay, is this a lawful way of serving a civil-process? Behold!”

One and all they were of opinion, that it was a highly inelegant act in the constable to take advantage of a gentleman’s lunching on cheese and porter, to be so uncivil as to slip a civil-process into his hat. It was ungenerous; it was cruel; for the sudden shock of the thing coming instanter upon the lunch, would impair the proper digestion of the cheese, which is proverbially not so easy of digestion as blancmange.

Arrived at home I read the process, and felt a twinge of melancholy. Hard world! hard world! Here I am, as good a fellow as ever lived⁠—hospitable⁠—openhearted⁠—generous to a fault; and the Fates forbid that I should possess the fortune to bless the country with my bounteousness. Nay, while many a stingy curmudgeon rolls in idle gold, I, heart of nobleness as I am, I have civil-processes served on me! I bowed my head, and felt forlorn⁠—unjustly used⁠—abused⁠—unappreciated⁠—in short, miserable.

Hark! like a clarion! yea, like a bolt of thunder with bells to it⁠—came the all-glorious and defiant crow! Ye gods, how it set me up again! Right on my pins! Yes, verily on stilts!

Oh, noble cock!

Plain as cock could speak, it said, “Let the world and all aboard of it go to pot. Do you be jolly, and never say die! What’s the world compared to you? What is it, anyhow, but a lump of loam? Do you be jolly!”

Oh, noble cock!

“But my dear and glorious cock,” mused I, upon second thought, “one can’t so easily send this world to pot; one can’t so easily be jolly with civil-processes in his hat or hand.”

Hark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: “Hang the process, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash, go and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be jolly!”

Now this was the way⁠—through the imperative intimations of the cock⁠—that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my debts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at ease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though I heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception in this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my barns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gayly mischievous. But no⁠—what ventriloquist could so crow with such an heroic and celestial crow?

At last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had sawed and split my wood in March⁠—some five-and-thirty cords of it⁠—and now he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and spare, with a long saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye, which offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but undepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat. This man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all day in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke unless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw⁠—snow, snow, snow. The saw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day this man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it sitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was reading Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, I saw him in the act. I burst out of doors bareheaded. “Good heavens!” cried I; “what are you doing? Come in. This your dinner!”

He had a hunk of stale bread and another hunk of salt beef, wrapped in a wet newspaper, and washed his morsels down by melting a handful of fresh snow in his mouth. I took this rash man indoors, planted him by the fire, gave him a dish of hot pork and beans, and a mug of cider.

“Now,” said I, “don’t you bring any of your damp dinners here. You work by the job, to be sure; but I’ll dine you for all that.”

He expressed his acknowledgments in a calm, proud, but not ungrateful way, and dispatched his meal with satisfaction to himself, and me also. It afforded me pleasure to perceive that he quaffed down his mug of cider like a man. I honored him. When I addressed him in the way of business at his buck, I did so in a guardedly respectful and deferential manner. Interested in his singular aspect, struck by his wondrous intensity of application at his saw⁠—a most wearisome and disgustful occupation to most people⁠—I often sought to gather from him who he was, what sort of a life he led, where he was born, and so on. But he was mum. He came to saw my wood, and eat my dinners⁠—if I chose to offer them⁠—but not to gabble. At first, I somewhat resented his sullen silence under the circumstances.