accomplishing a great deal of
work in a style not easy to be matched--for these reasons, I was willing
to overlook his eccentricities, though indeed, occasionally, I
remonstrated with him. I did this very gently, however, because, though
the civilest, nay, the blandest and most reverential of men in the
morning, yet in the afternoon he was disposed, upon provocation, to be
slightly rash with his tongue, in fact, insolent. Now, valuing his
morning services as I did, and resolved not to lose them; yet, at the
same time made uncomfortable by his inflamed ways after twelve o'clock;
and being a man of peace, unwilling by my admonitions to call forth
unseemly retorts from him; I took upon me, one Saturday noon (he was
always worse on Saturdays), to hint to him, very kindly, that perhaps
now that he was growing old, it might be well to abridge his labors; in
short, he need not come to my chambers after twelve o'clock, but, dinner
over, had best go home to his lodgings and rest himself till teatime.
But no; he insisted upon his afternoon devotions. His countenance
became intolerably fervid, as he oratorically assured me--gesticulating
with a long ruler at the other end of the room--that if his services in
the morning were useful, how indispensable, then, in the afternoon?

"With submission, sir," said Turkey on this occasion, "I consider myself
your right-hand man. In the morning I but marshal and deploy my
columns; but in the afternoon I put myself at their head, and gallantly
charge the foe, thus!"--and he made a violent thrust with the ruler.

"But the blots, Turkey," intimated I.

"True,--but, with submission, sir, behold these hairs! I am getting
old. Surely, sir, a blot or two of a warm afternoon is not to be
severely urged against gray hairs. Old age--even if it blot the
page--is honorable. With submission, sir, we _both_ are getting old."

This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all
events, I saw that go he would not. So I made up my mind to let him
stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it, that during the afternoon
he had to do with my less important papers.

Nippers, the second on my list, was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the
whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I
always deemed him the victim of two evil powers--ambition and
indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the
duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpatio