The Apple-Tree Table, and Other Sketches — John Shaqi
The Apple-Tree Table, and Other SketchesMelville, Herman
General
The Apple-Tree Table, and Other Sketches
Melville, Herman
American fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, American
Straight as an arrow I went to Jimmy's. Upon inquiring for him, the man
at the door told me that his master was not in; nor did he know where
he was; nor had his master been in the house for forty-eight hours.
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was secret or withdrawn in the histories and habits of noted people.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 billowed 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 one 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.
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