“TWIGGS AND TUDENS”
If my old school-chum and room-mate John Skinner is alive to-day—and no doubt he is alive, and quite so, being, when last heard from, the very alert and effective Train Dispatcher at Butler, Indiana,—he will not have forgotten a certain night in early June (the 8th) of 1870, in “Old Number ’Leven” of the Dunbar House, Greenfield, when he and I sat the long night through, getting ready a famous issue of our old school-paper, “The Criterion.” And he will remember, too, the queer old man who occupied, but that one night, the room just opposite our own, Number 13. For reasons wholly aside from any superstitious dread connected with the numerals, 13 was not a desirable room; its locality was alien to all accommodations, and its comforts, like its furnishings, were extremely meagre. In fact, it was the room usually assigned to the tramp-printer, who, in those days, was an institution; or again, it was the local habitation of the oft-recurring transient customer who was too incapacitated to select a room himself when he retired—or rather, when he was personally retired by “the hostler,” as the gentlemanly night-clerk of that era was habitually designated.
As both Skinner and myself—between fitful terms of school—had respectively served as “printer’s devil” in the two rival newspaper offices of the town, it was natural for us to find a ready interest in anything pertaining to the newspaper business; and so it was, perhaps, that we had been selected, by our own approval and that of our fellow-students of The Graded Schools, to fill the rather exalted office of editing “The Criterion.” Certain it is that the rather abrupt rise from the lowly duties of the “roller” to the editorial management of a paper of our own (even if issued in handwriting) we accepted as a natural right; and, vested in our new power of office, we were largely “shaping the whisper of the throne” about our way.
And upon this particular evening it was, as John and I had fairly squared ourselves for the work of the night, that we heard the clatter and shuffle of feet on the side-stairs, and, an instant later, the hostler establishing some poor unfortunate in 13, just across the hall.
“Listen!” said John, as we heard an old man’s voice through the open transom of our door,—“listen at that!”
It was an utterance peculiarly refined, in language as well as intonation. A low, mild, rather apologetic voice, gently assuring the hostler that “everything was very snug and comfortable indeed—so far as the compartment was concerned—but would not the attendant kindly supply a better light, together with pen-and-ink—and just a sheet or two of paper,—if he would be so very good as to find a pardon for so very troublesome a guest.”
“Hain’t no writin’-paper,” said the hostler, briefly,—“and the big lamps is all in use. These fellers here in ’Leven might let you have some paper and—Hain’t you got a lead-pencil?”
“Oh, no matter!” came the impatient yet kindly answer of the old voice—“no matter at all, my good fellow!—Good night—good night!”
We waited till the sullen, clumpy footsteps down the hall and stair had died away.
Then Skinner, with a handful of foolscap, opened our door; and, with an indorsing smile from me, crossed the hall and tapped at 13—was admitted—entered, and very quietly closed the door behind him, evidently that I might not be disturbed.
I wrote on in silence for quite a time. It was, in fact, a full half-hour before John had returned,—and with a face and eye absolutely blazing with delight.
“An old printer,” whispered John, answering my look,—“and we’re in luck:—He’s a genius, ’y God! and an Englishman, and knows Dickens personally—used to write races with him, and’s got a manuscript of his in his ‘portmanteau,’ as he calls an old oil-cloth knapsack with one lung clean gone. Excuse this extra light.—Old man’s lamp’s like a sore eye, and he’s going to touch up the Dickens sketch for us! Hear?—For us—for ‘The Criterion.’ Says he can’t sleep—he’s in distress—has a presentiment—some dear friend is dying—or dead now—and he must write—write!”
This is, in briefest outline, the curious history of the subjoined sketch, especially curious for the reason that the following morning’s cablegram announced that the great novelist, Charles Dickens, had been stricken suddenly and seriously the night previous. On the day of this announcement—even as “The Criterion” was being read to perfunctorily interested visitors of The Greenfield Graded Schools—came the further announcement of Mr. Dickens’s death. The old printer’s manuscript, here reproduced, is, as originally, captioned—