His coats were execrable; his hat not to be handled.  But while the hat was a thing of indifference to me, inasmuch as his natural civility and deference, as a dependent Englishman, always led him to doff it the moment he entered the room, yet his coat was another matter.  Concerning his coats, I reasoned with him; but with no effect.  The truth was, I suppose, that a man of so small an income, could not afford to sport such a lustrous face and a lustrous coat at one and the same time.  As Nippers once observed, Turkey’s money went chiefly for red ink.  One winter day I presented Turkey with a highly-respectable looking coat of my own, a padded gray coat, of a most comfortable warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck.  I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons.  But no.  I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him; upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses.  In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat.  It made him insolent.  He was a man whom prosperity harmed.

Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I had my own private surmises, yet touching Nippers I was well persuaded that whatever might by his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man.  But indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an irritable, brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless.  When I consider how, amid the stillness of my chambers, Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk, and move it, and jerk it, with a grim, grinding motion on the floor, as if the table were a perverse voluntary agent, intent on thwarting and vexing him; I plainly perceive that for Nippers, brandy and water were altogether superfluous.

It was fortunate for me that, owing to its peculiar cause—­indigestion—­the irritability and consequent nervousness of Nippers, were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon he was comparatively mild.  So that Turkey’s paroxysms only coming on about twelve o’clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time.  Their fits relieved each other like guards.  When Nippers’ was on, Turkey’s was off; and vice versa.  This was a good natural arrangement under the circumstances.

Ginger Nut, the third on my list, was a lad some twelve years old.  His father was a carman, ambitious of seeing his son on the bench instead of a cart, before he died.  So he sent him to my office as student at law, errand boy, and cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week.  He had a little desk to himself, but he did not use it much.  Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array