When I was explaining, the next day, to the proprietor how the chair in the editor’s room came to be broken, and also how the silhouette of an octopus came to be executed so boldly in ink upon the wall of the same apartment, the “scratch” editor (his appellation had a double significance this day) entered suddenly. He said he had come to explain something.
Now when a literary gentleman appears with long strips of sticking plaster loosely adhering to one side of his face, as white caterpillars adhere to a garden wall, and when, moreover, the perfume that floats on the air at his approach is that of a peppermint lozenge that has been preserved from decay in alcohol, any explanation that he may offer in regard to a preceding occurrence is likely to be received with suspicion, if not with absolute distrust. In this case, however, no opportunity was given the man for justifying any claim that he might advance to be credited.
The proprietor assured him that he had already received an account of the deplorable occurrence of the night before, and that he hoped mutual apologies would be made in the course of the day, so that, in diplomatic language, the incident might be considered closed before night.
The “scratch” man breathed again—heavily, alcoholically, peppermintally. And before night I managed to sticking-plaster up a peace between the belligerents.
At the end of a month some busybody outside the paper had the bad taste to point out to the proprietor that one of the leading articles—the one contributed by the “scratch” man—in a recent issue of the paper, was to a word identical with one which had appeared a fortnight before in a Scotch paper of some importance. The “scratch” man explained—on alcohol and a clove—that the Scotch paper had copied his article. But the proprietor expressed his grave doubts on this point, his chief reason for adopting this course being that the Scotch paper with the article had appeared ten days previously. Then the “scratch” man said the matter was a singular, but by no means unprecedented, coincidence.
The proprietor opened the office door.
One of the most interesting of these “casuals” had been a clergyman (he said). I never was quite successful in finding out with what Church he had been connected, nor, although pressed for a reply, would he ever reveal to me how he came to find himself outside the pale of his Church—whatever it was. He had undoubtedly some of the mannerisms of a clergyman who is anxious that every one should know his profession, and he could certainly look out of the corners of his eyes with the best of them. Like the parson who is so very “low” that he steadily refuses to cross his t’s lest he should be accused of adopting Romish emblems, he declined to turn his head without moving his whole body.
He wore rusty cloth gloves.
He was also the most adroit thief whom I ever met; and I have lived among some adroit ones in my time.