Now drawing a knife upon any one was one of the offences included in our criminal statutes; but the sage legislators of Ford's Bar no more thought of including a bottle in their list of prohibited weapons than king Kehama, though possessed of superhuman wisdom, thought of charming his son's life against a stake. The Tinker therefore escaped, while his antagonist having been brought into court by the sheriff, and tried before Justice Graham, assisted by a jury of three members, was fined twelve dollars and ordered to leave the bar within twenty-four hours under penalty of a sound flogging. Accordingly, early the next morning he was seen ascending the mountain, and was shot several months after in a quarrel somewhere below Mormon Island.
This instance of prompt severity exerted a very salutary influence; though little disputes were constantly arising, the services of the judge were not again called into exercise, at least in criminal cases, through the whole summer, and Ford's Bar became tolerably quiet.
Men, to be sure, still continued to get drunk. There was no attempt that I ever heard of to introduce the Maine Law into the mines, and the only restraint imposed upon their excesses was an empty purse and failing credit, or a feeble resolution of our Nantucketer to sell no more liquor to a man who was already too tipsy to stand without leaning against the counter.
The high moral Scotchman before mentioned and one or two others were seldom seen when they were not, to say the least, somewhat elevated. They had long before reached that stage when a man can hardly be said to be himself except when animated by liquor. Deprive them of that, they were dull lifeless machines, like a run-down clock, and needed every few hours to be wound up afresh. Pour into them a little brandy and the effect was electrical—the hidden springs and wheels began to move, and soon the whole complex apparatus was in active operation. Then, what flashes of wit and humour! what eloquent harangues! what high-toned moral sentiments! Alas! what hypocrisy, what inconsistency is like that of strong drink! how high in profession, how less than nothing in practice!
Then, no matter what subject might be started, our friend Pop or Poppycoc was ready at a moment's warning to mount a box or barrel, and declaim for the hour together in any style that should be required, pathetic, didactic, historical, or argumentative. The last, however, especially suited his humour. In his mouth the expression, That's all poppycoc, from which he obtained his name, and which he had borrowed from some scenes in The Mysteries of Paris, possessed an almost magic significance. It was a mortal stab, a downright crushing blow that could neither be parried nor evaded. No matter how wisely his opponent argued, nor how good the cause, the inevitable "That's all poppycoc," broke through all his defences, and compelled him to an ignominious retreat. It was the bar of iron forty feet long on the shoulders of the dwarf, and equally confounded all degrees.
The same week on which these events occurred, our society received a most agreeable accession in the person of a little German doctor with whom we had become partially acquainted at Mormon Island.
Dr. Tabisch was a short squat figure, with a low wrinkly forehead, unusually wide, especially at the eyebrows, small piercing gray eyes, and a very large, long, and pointed nose, wearing its spectacles, for they plainly had nothing to do with the eyes, way down at its lower extremity. His mouth was also large, something between Washington's and Henry Clay's, or the blind man's that stands near the Old Brick, with long thick lips, that yet met when they were at rest, which to be sure was not very often, in a firm straight line. He wore in all weathers a long brown surtout secured under his chin with a single button; and being prevented by age and infirmity from mining, he went stumping about the country, visiting his neighbours, indulging his natural taste for botany, and making regularly, as often as once a month, what he called wonderful discoveries about the gold.
His voice was his most remarkable peculiarity, and would have made the fortune of half a dozen singing masters or ventriloquists. It began way down in his chest, and came rolling and rumbling, then shrieking, up his throat like an echo behind mountains or a locomotive coming from under a covered bridge. He uttered his first words in a smothered German guttural, and gradually raised his voice to a sharp falsetto; and if the sentence were longer than common, he went through the same process the second time. He had a habit, while speaking, of shaking his head in a very impressive manner, and bending his face towards the ground, while his sharp grey eye—it seemed at such times as if he had only one—glared terribly from under its ambush eyebrows, and his forefinger, as if to give greater certainty to his aim, vibrated slowly from the end of his own nose to that of his fascinated victim.
Such flexibility of voice could not exist without equal mobility of feature. His mouth worked incessantly, whether he were talking or not; sometimes he champed the ends of his iron-grey moustache, at others gnawed his nether lip, or protruded both as if he were about to whistle Old Hundred, or were trying to drink cider out of an imaginary bung-hole without the aid of a straw.
Add to this his strong German accent, the odd way in which he prolonged many of his vowels, those especially belonging to his bass notes, and the simple child-like vivacity he displayed on every occasion, and we had one of the funniest, most agreeable little old gentlemen I ever met with.