“Jeremiah, read those directions and intimations once more; they contain no less than a challenge to my valour. Truly his Black Majesty seems to think that he can toss about the ball of earth for his amusement; and that there is not a tailor who would venture to ‘measure him.’ Ah! Nick, give me a trial.”
Thus spoke Gideon Chiselwig, tailor, in Ormskirk. Unlike the most of his brethren belonging to that honourable profession, he could boast of six feet of perpendicular matter; but conceiving that even that height was too low a tabernacle for his giant soul, he fixed to the one extremity a long red nightcap, whilst he made the other move on tiptoe, much to the mirth of the quizzing old maids, for which that town is noted. He was never seen with that upper garment, commonly called a coat; unless to display one of fashionable cut, which he had just finished; and the absence of this did not take from Gideon’s stature. Some conjectured that he knew this; others had seen Mrs. Gideon, at home, arrayed in what, evidently, had once been a coat; and they jocosely remarked, that she had altogether monopolized the use of her husband’s apparel, for now they had seen her with the coat, and Gideon himself had confessed that she wore the breeches.—He had a vest, but the pockets were only visited by his hands; silver and gold they had never weighed; so that to all intents and purposes—the wife wore the vest also.
Nature, however, had denied him her average allowance of breadth and thickness, so much so, that in a tour to remarkable places, during the honey-moon, having entered a museum in the metropolis, the blushing bride was asked by the keeper, what was the price she fixed upon the piece of anatomy which she brought. Gideon, did, indeed, convince the questioner of his mistake, by a powerful and conclusive argument directed against his head: still people will suspect, even in the face of ample evidence; and the report had been afloat, that there was something altogether strange about him. This only served to give a more singular character to the tailor, and nothing short of the marvellous in adventure could win his attention and occupy his thoughts.
Others hinted, that were Mrs. Gideon not to awake him so early; not to rap his knuckles, when at table he was stretching forth his hand to help himself; nor yet to allow the poker to fall upon his toes and corns, when they ventured within a few yards of the fire; not to compel him to perform the necessary ablutions on a cold morning, a mile from the house, and then allow the sun, the wind, or the frost, to dry him; not to confine him, for bedclothes, to a sheet in winter, and his shirt in summer; nor yet, occasionally, to exercise her hands, and a stick, upon his body; Gideon would soon improve in appearance, and, at length, be a rival to the oily priest. But the old maids (for Mrs. Gideon had formerly been one of the numerous sisterhood residing there) considered such hints as morsels of scandal;—and who can, with more propriety, condemn scandal, than old maids?—and if, in the multitude of councillors there be safety, their view of the matter, certainly, had every assurance of being the correct one—that he was killed by too much fondling and love. Ah! ah! poor Gideon knew better. He had a scar on his face that he was proud to shew, for he had received it in honourable combat with a barber;—but he had others, below the night-cap, and many all over his person, which he was glad to conceal; for these he received from his wife! At first he resisted her encroachment upon the rights of man; but soon his noble spirit disdained to contend with a woman. He had not lost a dram of courage, and he burned for some supernatural achievement.
His brother Jeremiah was made exactly in the antipodean style. He was short and round; yet, as he himself pathetically said, when the doctor, dreading apoplexy, had inquired about his diet, “tears were his daily food, and misfortunes were the vinegar and salt.” His eyes, in fact, seemed to have invisible onions always around them. It was so when he was a babe, and his mother was in the habit of remarking, that Jeremiah would not be troubled with water in the head, because it would never stay there. When he entered upon the profession of a tailor, Gideon had serious doubts that he would but bring disgrace on it, himself, and all his relations; for, as he very wisely reasoned, “How could he use the goose?—however hot it was, in a moment his tears would cool it. And as for his needles—a hundred would become rusty in a day.” However, Jeremiah passed his apprenticeship with distinction, and became a partner in his brother’s shop; where we introduce them, squatted on a large table, to our readers, at the moment that Gideon had finished the sentence which opens the Legend.
Jeremiah had in his hand, an old and tattered book, which seemed to have been read by the feet, and not the eyes. He raised his eyes from it, as his brother spoke, and poured forth a fresh flood of tears. “Ah! brother,” he said, “you’ll still be after what leads to your destruction. I warned you against marriage. On the night previous, did I not strike you sharply on the ankle, and then upon the head, and ask you how you could endure to have it repeated a hundred times, in the whole multiplication table of your life. And now,” here tears impeded his words, “can I not read about Satan’s tricks without your wishing—”
“Resolving you mean; nay, Jeremiah, call it resolving to fight him. I’m sure that he’s in Ormskirk. Yesterday morning, when I came from washing myself, I traced in the snow a strange hoof to this very door. There never was such a nunnery of old maids, in which he was not found wooing them. But—but I’ll make a goose of him—I will!” concluded the magnanimous tailor.
“A goose! a goose!” exclaimed the simple Jeremiah, in horror, “he’ll burn our hands, and the cloth. I cannot use him for a goose. Oh! brother, only say that you will not make him either a needle or a goose, and I’ll read the words over again.”