F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 10
the left of the long, sombre aisle, and drawing from his pocket a
ten-cent piece, throws it upon the table, with an air of great
importance.
"I am not moneyless," he exclaims--"not I!" and he staggers to the
great chimney-place, rebounding to the floor, saying, "Take
that-bring her in-quench my burning thirst!"
Tom is the only surviving, and now the outcast, member of a somewhat
respectable family, that has moved in the better walks of society.
His mother, being scrupulous of her position in society, and
singularly proud withal, has reared and educated her son in
idleness, and ultimately slights and discards him, because he, as
she alleges, sought society inferior to his position and her
dignity. In his better days he had been erect of person, and even
handsome; but the thraldom of the destroyer has brought him to the
dust, a pitiable wreck.
Tom has seen thirty summers, presents a full, rounded figure, and
stands some five feet ten. He wears an old brown coat, cut after the
fashion of a surtout, that might have fitted him, he says, when he
was a man. But it has lost the right cuff, the left flap, and a part
of the collar; the nefarious moths, too, have made a sieve of its
back. His trowsers are of various colors, greasy down the sides,
ragged at the bottoms, and revealing two encrusted ancles, with feet
stuck into old shoes, turned under at the heels for convenience
sake. A remark from the cribber touches his pride, and borrowing a
few pins he commences pinning together the shattered threads of his
nether garment. A rope-yarn secured about his waist gives a
sailor-like air to his outfit. But, notwithstanding Tom affects the
trim of the craft, the skilled eye can easily detect the deception;
for the craftsman, even under a press of head sail, preserves a
becoming rig.
Indeed, Tom might have attempted without effect, during his natural
life, to transform himself into a sailor. The destroyer was his
victor; the inner man was but a reflex of the outer. He pulled an
old cloth cap over his face, which was immersed in a massive black