“I’ve no doubt,” said he, as he puffed forth volumes of smoke, and seemed to cogitate deeply—“I’ve not the slightest doubt that this is as beautiful a night as ever was; only it’s so dark you can’t see the pattern of it. One night is pretty much like another night in the dark; but it’s a great advantage to a good-looking evening, if the lamps are lit, so you can twig the stars and the moonshine. The fact is, that in this ’ere city, we do grow the blackest moons, and the hardest moons to find, I ever did see. Sometimes I’m most disposed to send the bellman after ’em—or get a full-blooded pinter to pint ’em out, while I hold a candle to see which way he pints. It wouldn’t be a bad notion on sich occasions to ask the man in the steeple to ring which way the moon is. Lamps is lamps, and moons is moons, in a business pint of view, but practically they ain’t much if the wicks ain’t a-fire. When the luminaries are, as I may say, in the raw, it’s bad for me. I can’t see the ground as perforately as little fellers, and every dark night I’m sure to get a hyst—either a forred hyst, or a backerd hyst, or some sort of a hyst—but more backerds than forrerds, ’specially in winter. One of the most unfeeling tricks I know of, is the way some folks have got of laughing out, yaw-haw! when they see a gentleman ketching a riggler hyst—a long gentleman, for instance, with his legs in the air, and his noddle splat down upon the cold bricks. A hyst of itself is bad enough, without being sniggered at: first, your sconce gets a crack; then, you see all sorts of stars, and have free admission to the fireworks; then, you scramble up, feeling as if you had no head on your shoulders, and as if it wasn’t you, but some confounded disagreeable feller in your clothes; yet the jacksnipes all grin, as if the misfortunes of human nature was only a poppet-show. I wouldn’t mind it, if you could get up and look as if you didn’t care. But a man can’t rise, after a royal hyst, without letting on he feels flat. In such cases, however, sympathy is all gammon; and as for sensibility of a winter’s day, people keep it all for their own noses, and can’t be coaxed to retail it by the small.”
Linkum paused in his prophetic dissertation upon “hysts”—the popular pronunciation, in these parts, of the word hoist, which is used—quasi lucus a non lucendo—to convey the idea of the most complete tumble which man can experience. A fall, for instance, is indeterminate. It may be an easy slip down—a gentle visitation of mother earth; but a hyst is a rapid, forcible performance, which may be done, as Linkum observes, either backward or forward, but of necessity with such violence as to knock the breath out of the body, or it is unworthy of the noble appellation of hyst. It is an apt, but figurative mode of expression, and it is often carried still further; for people sometimes say, “lower him up, and hyst him down.”
Our hero held on firmly to the railing, and peered keenly into the darkness, without discovering any object on which his vision could rest. The gloom was substantial. It required sharper eyes than his to bore a hole in it. The wind was up, and the storm continued to coat the steps and pavements with a sheet of ice.
“It’s raining friz potatoes,” observed Linkum; “I feel ’em, though I can’t see ’em, bumping the end of my nose; so I must hurry home as fast as I can.”
Heedless and hapless youth! He made a vain attempt to descend, but, slipping, he came in a sitting posture upon the top step, and, in that attitude, flew down like lightning—bump! bump! bump! The impetus he had acquired prevented him from stopping on the sidewalk, notwithstanding his convulsive efforts to clutch the icy bricks, and he skuted into the gutter, whizzing over the curbstone, and splashing into the water, like a young Niagara.
A deep silence ensued, broken solely by the pattering of the rain and the bowling of the wind. Linkum was an exhausted receiver; the hyst was perfect, the breath being completely knocked out of him.
“Laws-a-massy!” at length he panted, “ketching” breath at intervals, and twisting about as if in pain; “my eyes! sich a hyst! Sich a quantity of hysts all in one! The life’s almost bumped out of me, and I’m jammed up so tight, I don’t believe I’m so tall by six inches as I was before. I’m druv up and clinched, and I’ll have to get tucks in my trousers.”
Linkum sat still, ruminating on the curtailment of his fair proportions, and made no effort to rise. The door soon opened again, and Mr. Broad Brevis came forth, at which a low, suppressed chuckle was uttered by Linkum, as he looked over his shoulder, anticipating “a quantity of hysts all in one” for the new-comer, whose figure, however—short and stout—was much better calculated for the operation than Linkum’s. But Brevis seemed to suspect that the sliding was good, and the skating magnificent.
“No, you don’t!” quoth he, as he tried the step with one foot, and recovered himself; “I haven’t seen the Alleghany Portage and inclined planes for nothing. It takes me to diminish the friction, and save the wear and tear.”
So saying, he quietly tucked up his coat-tails, and sitting down upon the mat, which he grasped with both hands, gave himself a gentle impulse, crying “All aboard!” and slid slowly but majestically down. As he came to the plain sailing across the pavement, he twanged forth “Ta-ra-ta-ra-ta-ra-tra-a-a!” in excellent imitation of the post-horn, and brought up against Linkum. “Clear the course for the express mail, or I’ll report you to the department!” roared Brevis, trumpeting the “alarum,” so well known to all who have seen a tragedy—“Tra-tretra-ta-ra-tra-a-a!”