We had scarcely reposed ourselves, and taken from the hands of an awaiting slave the vessels of thrice-potent liquid which in this Island is regarded as the indispensable accompaniment to every movement of existence, when a third person entered the room, and seating himself at a table some slightly removed distance away, lowered his head and abandoned himself to a display of most lavish dejection.
“That poor cuss doesn’t appear to be holiday-making,” remarked the sincerely-compassionate person at my side, after closely observing the other for a period; and then, moved by the overpowering munificence of his inward nature, he called aloud, “Say, stranger, you seem to have got it thickly in the neck. Is it family affliction or the whisky of the establishment?”
At these affably-intentioned words the stranger raised his eyes quickly, with an indication of not having up to that time been aware of our presence.
“Sir,” he exclaimed, approaching to a spot where he could converse with a more enhanced facility, “when I loosened the restraint of an overpowering if unmanly grief, I imagined that I was alone, for I would have shunned even the most flattering sympathy, but your charitably-modulated voice invites confidence. The one before you is the most contemptible, left-handed, and disqualified outcast in creation, and he is now making his way towards the river, while his widow will be left to take in washing, his infant son to vend evening printed leaves, and his graceful and hitherto highly secluded daughters to go upon the stage.”
“Say, stranger,” interposed this person, by no means unwilling to engrave upon his memory this newly-acquired form of greeting, “the emotion is doubtless all-pressing, but in my ornate and flower-laden tongue we have a salutation, ‘Slowly, slowly; walk slowly,’ which seems to be of far-seeing application.”
“That’s so,” remarked the one by my side. “Separate it with the teeth, inch by inch.”
“I will be calm, then,” continued the other (who, to avoid the complication of the intermingling circumstances, may be described as the more stranger of the two), and he took of his neckcloth. “I am a merchant in tea, yellow fat, and mixed spices, in a small but hitherto satisfactory way.” Thus revealing himself, he continued to set forth how at an earlier hour he had started on a journey to deposit his wealth (doubtless as a propitiation of outraged deities) upon a certain bank, and how, upon reaching the specified point, he discovered that what he carried had eluded his vigilance. “All gone: notes, gold, and pocket-book—the savings of a lifetime,” concluded the ill-omened one, and at the recollection a sudden and even more highly-sustained frenzy of self-unpopularity involving him, without a pause he addressed himself by seven and twenty insulting expressions, many of which were quite new to my understanding.
At the earliest mention of the details affecting the loss, the elbow of the person who had made himself responsible for the financial obligation of the day propelled itself against my middle part, and unseen by the other he indicated to me by means of his features that the entertainment was becoming one of agreeable prepossession.
“Now, touching this hyer wallet,” he said presently. “How might you describe it?”
“In colour it was red, and within were two compartments, the one containing three score notes each of ten pounds, the other fifty pounds of gold. But what’s the use of describing it? Some lucky demon will pick it up and pocket the lot, and I shall never see a cent of it again.”