It was at this juncture that the youth of many locks and ample Byronic shirt collar appeared on the scene. Aloysius Pittsinger was his name. He was a consolation. His very name, Aloysius, had a sweet gurgle in the sound, resembling the anticipatory and involuntary noises from children's mouths at the sight of sugar lollipops. He was a clerk in Mr. Goldstein's store. There he dispensed tobacco, both fine-cut and plug, assorted nails, New Orleans sugar, Rio coffee, Porto Rico molasses, Gloucester mackerel, together with foreign cloths and homespun jeans, and all the gimcracks which little negroes coveted and the swarms of summer flies had spared.
The appearance of Aloysius happened in this wise. Mr. Fenton was an early riser, but was loath to go to his shop without his breakfast. On the fateful morning he had come down rather earlier than usual. After due search and discussion, it was announced to him that there was nothing at once appetizing and substantial in the house that could, within the desired period, be got ready for the table; and his wife made bold to ask if in this emergency he wouldn't go out and get something. To a hungry man, in the faint interval after a "nipper" and before a solid bit, such a proposition is an unpleasant surprise. But, after devoting the cook and the household generally to immediate pains and inconveniences, and to something more hereafter, Mr. Fenton put on his slouched hat and started out. He mused also.
If I were ambitious of the fame of the great American novelist, or were contending for the fifty thousand dollar prize offered by the publishers of the Metropolitan Album, and hoped to have my thrilling descriptions read by its subscribing army of three hundred and fifty-one thousand chambermaids, I might paint the current of his swift thought thus:
"The air bites shrewdly. Ha, by the mass! Shall I to the abattoir and ask the slayer of oxen for a steak? or a chop from the loin of sheep, a bell-wether of Kentucky's finest flock—Kentucky, state renowned for dainty mutton? Or does the slayer of oxen yet sleep, supinely stertorous, heavy with the lingering fumes of the mighty Bourbon? Perchance he has no steak, no chop!—all gone to feed an insatiable people! Bethink me. Ay—and the abattoir is far, though its perfume is nigh; it is thrice a hundred yards from hence. I will go to the house of the Israelite, Goldstein, and get a fish—a fish dear to losel Yankees, and not scorned by the sons of the sun-land either. 'Tis well. I will make the trial. Haply I shall find that the young man, Pittsinger, whose prænomen is Aloysius, has arisen, and is even now combing his ambrosial locks."
What he did think was something like this:
"It's doggon cold this mornin'. I wonder whether that derned old drunken Bill Stone's got ary bit of fresh meat—and if he's up yet. I don't b'lieve it, for he was drunk's an owl last night at old Red Eye. Besides, it's fer to the slaughter-house. Le's see. I might get a mackerel at Goldstein's. I'll do it. B'iled a little, to take the salt out, and then het with cream, it ain't bad, by a derned sight."
He walked out to the square, occasionally blowing his cold fingers. The shutters were not taken down from Goldstein's front windows, but Mr. Fenton knew that the clerk slept in a little room in a ruinous lean-to back of the store, and he rattled the door to call him. There was no answer, nor sound of any one stirring, and he rattled again. His powerful shake made the square resound. He called, endeavoring to throw his voice through the key-hole, "Aloysius, ain't you up yit? I want a mackerel."
The silence was aggravating, and there were internal qualms that made Fenton doubly impatient.
"Aloysius, you lazy bones! Do you hear? I want a mackerel for breakfast. You're thest the no-countest boy I ever see! If 'twan't for your father, you'd thest starve."