"I do believe you were drunk," said Boggs, "and if you ever get hauled up before the justice you will have to pay ten dollars, and if you have not that decimal amount handy, you had better entrust it to the boy's keeping, to have it ready in case of such an emergency."
Nick felt in his pockets, and with a puzzled air remarked:
"I haven't got the money here, but I'll give you a check on the Nassau Bank for a thousand, and you can give me the change; or I'll give you a deed of Stewart's, or a mortgage lien on the Astor House."
"Shan't do it, shan't do it, Old Nick; and I'm afraid you'll have to go to Blackwell's Island, sure."
"There's that infernal island again," said Nick; "if I'd ever thought it would come to this, I never'd have given that little piece of property to the city; but I'll buy it back next week, and use it hereafter for a cabbage garden; see if I don't."
By this time the Elephants seemed to disposed to go, but Nick spied on the shirt-front of Mr. John Spout a diamond pin, which seemed to take his fancy. He offered in vain a block of stores in Pearl street, the Custom-House, the Assay-Office, the Metropolitan Hotel and three-quarters of the steamer Atlantic, and to throw into the bargain Staten Island and Brooklyn City; but it was no use, the party took their leave, and Nick was disconsolate.
Passing up Broadway, their attention was attracted by one of those full-length basswood statues of impossible-looking men, holding an impracticable pistol in his hand, at an angle which never could be achieved by a live man with the usual allowance of bones, but which defiant figure was evidently intended to be suggestive of a shooting-gallery in the rear.
Mr. John Spout, who was in a philosophic mood, remarked that it was a curious study to observe the various abortive efforts of aspiring carpenters to represent the human form divine, in the three-cornered wooden men, which stand for "pistol-galleries;" and the inexplicable Turks, the unheard of Scotchmen, and the Indians of every possible and impossible tribe, which are supposed to hint "tobacco and cigars."
The ambitious carpenter first hews out a distorted caricature of a man, which he passes over to the painters to be embellished. By the time the figure has survived the last operation, it might certainly be worshipped without transgressing any scriptural injunction, for it certainly looks like nothing in "the heavens above, the earth below, or the waters under the earth." It is, however, an easy matter to distinguish the Highlanders from the Turks, by the fact, that the calves of their legs are larger around than their waists, and they are dressed in petticoats and plaid stockings; the Turks and Indians, however, being of the same color, might easily be confounded, were it not for the inexplicable circumstance that the former are always squatting down, while the latter are invariably standing up; they are all, however, remarkable for the unstable material of which their countenances are manufactured; after one has been exposed to the boys and the weather for about a fortnight, his nose will disappear, his lips come up a minus quantity, the top of his head be knocked off, and a minute's scrutiny will generally disclose the presence of innumerable gimlet-holes in his eyes. The boys, in their desire to comprehend perfectly the internal economy of these human libels, not unfrequently carry their anatomical investigations to the extent of cutting off a leg or two, and amputating one or more arms, or cutting out three or four ribs with a buck-saw or a broad-axe. Indeed, there is one unfortunate wooden Indian, of some fossil and unknown tribe, on exhibition in front of a snuff-shop in the Bowery, who has not only lost both legs, one arm, and his stomach, but has actually endured the amputation of the head and neck, and bears a staff stuck in the hole where his spine ought to be, and upon a flag is inscribed the heartless sentence, "Mrs. Miller's Fine Cut—for particulars inquire within."