Such a man is Fydget Fyxington, an amelioration-of-the-human-race-by-starting-from-first-principles-philosopher. Fydget’s abstract principle, particularly in matters of government and of morals, is doubtless a sound rule; but he looks so much at the beginning that he rarely arrives at the end, and when he advances at all, he marches backward, his face being directed towards the starting place instead of the goal. By this means he may perhaps plough a straight furrow, but instead of curving round obstructions, he is very apt to be thrown down by them.
Winter ruled the hour when Fydget Fyxington was last observed to be in circulation—winter, when men wear their hands in their pockets and seldom straighten their backs—a season however, which, though sharp and biting in its temper, has redeeming traits. There is something peculiarly exhilarating in the sight of new-fallen snow. The storm which brings it is not without a charm. The graceful eddying of the drifts sported with by the wind, and the silent gliding of the feathery flakes, as one by one they settle upon the earth like fairy creatures dropping to repose, have a soothing influence not easily described, though doubtless felt by all. But when the clouds, having performed their office, roll away, and the brightness of the morning sun beams upon an expanse of sparkling unsullied whiteness; when all that is common-place, coarse, and unpleasant in aspect, is veiled for the time, and made to wear a fresh and dazzling garb, new animation is felt by the spirit. The young grow riotous with joy, and their merry voices ring like bells through the clear and bracing air; while the remembrance of earlier days gives a youthful impulse to the aged heart.
But to all this there is a sad reverse. The resolution of these enchantments into their original elements by means of a thaw, is a necessary, but, it must be confessed, a very doleful process, fruitful in gloom, rheum, inflammations, and fevers—a process which gives additional pangs to the melancholic, and causes valour’s self to droop like unstarched muslin.
Such a time was it when Fydget was extant—a sloppy time in January. The city, it is true, was clothed in snow, rusty and forlorn in aspect, and weeping, as if in sorrow that its original purity had become soiled, stained, and spotted by contact with the world. Its whiteness had in a measure disappeared, by the pressure of human footsteps; wheels and runners had almost incorporated it with the common earth; and, where these had failed in effectually doing the work, remorseless distributers of ashes, coal dust, and potato peelings, had lent their aid to give uniformity to the dingy hue. But the snow, “weeping its spirit from its eyes,” and its body too, was fast escaping from these multiplied oppressions and contumelies. Large and heavy drops splashed from the eaves; sluggish streams rolled lazily from the alleys, and the gutters and crossings formed vast shallow lakes, variegated by glaciers and ice islands. They who roamed abroad at this unpropitious time, could be heard approaching by the damp sucking sound which emanated from their boots, as they alternately pumped in and pumped out the water in their progress, and it was thus that our hero travelled, having no caoutchouc health-preservers to shield his pedals from unwholesome contact.
The shades of evening were beginning to thicken, when Fydget stopped shiveringly and looked through the glass door of a fashionable hotel—the blazing fire and the numerous lights, by the force of contrast, made an outside seat still more uncomfortable.
The gong pealed out that tea was ready, and the lodgers rushed from the stoves to comfort themselves with that exhilarating fluid.
“There they go on first principles,” said Fydget Fyxington with a sigh.
“Cla’ de kitchen da’,” said one of those ultra-aristocratic members of society, a negro waiter, as he bustled past the contemplative philosopher and entered the hotel; “you ought to be gwang home to suppa’, ole soul, if you got some—yaugh—waugh!”
“Suppa’, you nigga’!” contemptuously responded Fydget, as the door closed, “I wish I was gwang home to suppa’, but suppers are a sort of thing I remember a good deal oftener than I see. Every thing is wrong—such a wandering from first principles!—there must be enough in this world for us all, or we wouldn’t be here; but things is fixed so badly that I s’pose some greedy rascal gets my share of suppa’ and other such elegant luxuries. It’s just the way of the world; there’s plenty of shares of everything, but somehow or other there are folks that lay their fingers on two or three shares, and sometimes more, according as they get a chance, and the real owners, like me, may go whistle. They’ve fixed it so that if you go back to first principles and try to bone what belongs to you, they pack you right off to jail, ’cause you can’t prove property. Empty stummicks and old clothes ain’t good evidence in court.