Nodding excessively to himself with unspeakable gravity, the gentleman whose diluted mind has thus played the Dickens with him, slowly arises to an upright position by a series of complicated manoeuvres with both hands and feet; and, having carefully balanced himself on one leg, and shaking his aggressive old hat still farther down over his left eye, proceeds to take a cloudy view of his surroundings. He is in a room going on one side to a bar, and on the other side to a pair of glass doors and a window, through the broken panes of which various musty cloth substitutes for glass ejaculate toward the outer Mulberry Street. Tilted back in chairs against the wall, in various attitudes of dislocation of the spine and compound fracture of the neck, are an Alderman of the ward, an Assistant-Assessor, and the lady who keeps the hotel. The first two are shapeless with a slumber defying every law of comfortable anatomy; the last is dreamily attempting to light a stumpy pipe with the wrong end of a match, and shedding tears, in the dim morning ghastliness, at her repeated failures.
"Thry another," says this woman, rather thickly, to the gentleman balanced on one leg, who is gazing at her and winking very much. "Have another, wid some bitters."
He straightens himself extremely, to an imminent peril of falling over backward, sways slightly to and fro, and becomes as severe in expression of countenance as his one uncovered eye will allow.
The woman falls back in her chair again asleep, and he, walking with one shoulder depressed, and a species of sidewise, running gait, approaches and poises himself over her.
"What vision can she have?" the man muses, with his hat now fully upon the bridge of his nose. He smiles unexpectedly; as suddenly frowns with great intensity; and involuntarily walks backward against the sleeping Alderman. Him he abstractedly sits down upon, and then listens intently for any casual remark he may make. But one word comes— "Wairzernat'chal'zationc'tif'kits."
"Unintelligent!" mutters the man, weariedly; and, rising dejectedly from the Alderman, lurches, with a crash, upon the Assistant-Assessor. Him he shakes fiercely for being so bony to fall on, and then hearkens for a suitable apology.
"Warzwaz-yourwifesincome-lash'—lash'-year?"
A thoughtful pause, partaking of a doze.
"Unintelligent!"
Complicatedly arising from the Assessor, with his hat now almost hanging by an ear, the gentleman, after various futile but ingenious efforts to face towards the door by turning his head alone that way, finally succeeds by walking in a circle until the door is before him. Then, with his whole countenance charged with almost scowling intensity of purpose, though finding it difficult to keep his eyes very far open, he balances himself with the utmost care, throws his shoulders back, steps out daringly, and goes off at an acute slant toward the Alderman again. Recovering himself by a tremendous effort of will and a few wild backward movements, he steps out jauntily once more, and can not stop himself until he has gone twice around a chair on his extreme left and reached almost exactly the point from which he started the first time. He pauses, panting, but with the scowl of determination still more intense, and concentrated chiefly in his right eye. Very cautiously extending his dexter hand, that he may not destroy the nicety of his perpendicular balance, he points with a finger at the knob of the door, and suffers his stronger eye to fasten firmly upon the same object. A moment's balancing, to make sure, and then, in three irresistible, rushing strides, he goes through the glass doors with a burst, without stopping to turn the latch, strikes an ash-box on the edge of the sidewalk, rebounds to a lamp-post, and then, with the irresistible rush still on him, describes a hasty wavy line, marked by irregular heel-strokes, up the street.