“That’s queer fun, anyhow,” said a careful wayfarer, turning the corner, with lantern in hand, and sock on foot, who, after a short parley, was induced to set the gentlemen on their pins. First planting Brevis against the pump, who sang, “Let me lean on thee,” from the Sonnambula, in prime style, he undertook to lift up Linkum.
“Well,” observed the stranger, “this is a chap without no end to him—he’d be pretty long a drowning anyhow. If there was many more like him in the gutters, it would be better to get a windlass, and wind ’em up. I never seed a man with so much slack. The corporation ought to buy him, starch him up stiff, cut a hole for a clock in his hat, and use him for a steeple; only Downing wouldn’t like to trust himself on the top of such a ricketty concern. Neighbour, shall I fetch the Humane Society’s apparatus?”
“No—I ain’t drownded, only bumped severe. The curbstones have touched my feelings. I’m all over like a map—red, blue, and green.”
“Now,” said their friendly assistant, grinning at the joke, and at the recompense he had received for the job, “now, you two hook on to one another like Siameses, and mosey. You’ve only got to tumble one a top of t’other, and it won’t hurt. Tortle off—it’s slick going—’specially if you’re going down. Push ahead!” continued he, as he hitched them together; and away they went, a pair of slippers, arm in arm. Many were their tumbles and many their mischances before they reached their selected resting-place.
“I can’t stand this,” said Linkum to his companion, as they were slipping and falling; “but it’s mostly owing to my being so tall. I wish I was razee’d, and then it wouldn’t happen. The awning posts almost knock the head off me; I’m always tumbling over wheelbarrows, dogs, and children, because, if I look down, I’m certain to knock my noddle against something above. It’s a complete nuisance to be so tall. Beds are too short; if you go to a tea-fight, the people are always tumbling over your trotters, and breaking their noses, which is what young ladies ain’t partial to; and if you tipple too much toddy of a slippery night—about as easy a thing to do as you’d wish to try—you’re sure to get a hyst a square long—just such a one as I’ve had. If I’d thought of it, I could have said the multiplication-table while I was going the figure. Stumpy chaps, such as you, ain’t got no troubles in this world.”
“That’s all you know about it,” puffed Brevis, as Linkum alternately jerked him from his feet, and then caused him to slide in the opposite direction, with his heels ploughing the ice, like a shaft-horse holding back: “phew! That’s all you know about it—stumpies have troubles.”
“I can’t borrow coats,” added Linkum, soliloquizing, “because I don’t like cuffs at the elbows. I can’t borrow pants, because it isn’t the fashion to wear knee-breeches, and all my stockings are socks. I can’t hide when anybody owes me a lambasting. You can see me a mile. When I sit by the fire, I can’t get near enough to warm my body, without burning my knees; and in a stage-coach, there’s no room between the benches, and the way you get the cramp—don’t mention it.”
“I don’t know nothing about all these things; but to imagine I was a tall chap—”
“Don’t try; you’ll hurt yourself, for it’s a great stretch of imagination for a little feller to do that.”
After which amicable colloquy, nothing more was heard of them, except that, before retiring to rest, they chuckled over the idea that the coming spring would sweat the ice to death for the annoyance it had caused them. But ever while they live, will they remember “the night of hysts.”