Walking up Broadway again, I questioned passing acquaintances; but
though each man verified the report, no man could tell where Jimmy was,
and no one seemed to care, until I encountered a merchant, who hinted
that probably Jimmy, having scraped up from the wreck a snug lump of
coin, had prudently betaken himself off to parts unknown. The next man I
saw, a great nabob he was too, foamed at the mouth when I mentioned
Jimmy’s name. ‘Rascal; regular scamp, sir, is Jimmy Rose! But there are
keen fellows after him.’ I afterward heard that this indignant gentleman
had lost the sum of seventy-five dollars and seventy-five cents
indirectly through Jimmy’s failure. And yet I dare say the share of the
dinners he had eaten at Jimmy’s might more than have balanced that sum,
considering that he was something of a wine-bibber, and such wines as
Jimmy imported cost a plum or two. Indeed, now that I bethink me, I
recall how I had more than once observed this same middle-aged
gentleman, and how that toward the close of one of Jimmy’s dinners he
would sit at the table pretending to be earnestly talking with beaming
Jimmy, but all the while, with a half-furtive sort of tremulous
eagerness and hastiness, pour down glass after glass of noble wine, as
if now, while Jimmy’s bounteous sun was at meridian, was the time to
make his selfish hay.
At last I met a person famed for his peculiar knowledge of whatever was
secret or withdrawn in the histories and habits of noted people. When I
inquired of this person where Jimmy could possibly be, he took me close
to Trinity Church rail, out of the jostling of the crowd, and whispered
me, that Jimmy had the evening before entered an old house of his
(Jimmy’s) in C---- Street, which old house had been for a time
untenanted. The inference seemed to be that perhaps Jimmy might be
lurking there now. So getting the precise locality, I bent my steps in
that direction, and at last halted before the house containing the room
of roses. The shutters were closed, and cobwebs were spun in their
crescents. The whole place had a dreary, deserted air. The snow lay
unswept, drifted in one billowy heap against the porch, no footprint
tracking it. Whoever was within, surely that lonely man was an abandoned
one. Few or no people were in the street; for even at that period the
fashion of the street had departed from it, while trade had not as yet
occupied what its rival had renounced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account