Sometimes the coat was made to button behind instead of before, and he frequently placed the pockets in the lower part of the skirts, as if he had been in league with cut-purses.

This was a melancholy situation, and his friends pitied him accordingly.

“Don’t bo cast down, Neal,” said they, “your friends feel for you, poor fellow.”

“Divil carry my frinds,” replied Neal, “sure there’s not one o’ yez frindly enough to be my inimy.  Tare-an’-ounze! what’ll I do?  I’m blue-rhowlded for want of a batin’!”

Seeing that their consolation was thrown away upon him, they resolved to leave him to his fate; which they had no sooner done than Neal had thoughts of taking to the Skiomachia as a last remedy.  In this mood he looked with considerable antipathy at his own shadow for several nights; and it is not to be questioned, but that some hard battles would have taken place between them, were it not for the cunning of the shadow, which declined to fight him in any other position than with its back to the wall.  This occasioned him to pause, for the wall was a fearful antagonist, inasmuch that it knew not when it was beaten; but there was still an alternative left.  He went to the garden one clear day about noon, and hoped to have a bout with the shade, free from interruption.  Both approached, apparently eager for the combat, and resolved to conquer or die, when a villanous cloud happening to intercept the light, gave the shadow an opportunity of disappearing; and Neal found himself once more without an opponent.

“It’s aisy known,” said Neal, “you haven’t the blood in you, or you’d come up to the scratch like a man.”

He now saw that fate was against him, and that any further hostility towards the shadow was only a tempting of Providence.  He lost his health, spirits, and everything but his courage.  His countenance became pale and peaceful looking; the bluster departed from him; his body shrunk up like a withered parsnip.  Thrice was he compelled to take in his clothes, and thrice did he ascertain that much of his time would be necessarily spent in pursuing his retreating person through the solitude of his almost deserted garment.

God knows it is difficult to form a correct opinion upon a situation so paradoxical as Neal’s was.  To be reduced to skin and bone by the downright friendship of the world, was, as the sagacious reader will admit, next to a miracle.  We appeal to the conscience of any man who finds himself without an enemy, whether he be not a greater skeleton than the tailor; we will give him fifty guineas provided he can show a calf to his leg.  We know he could not; for the tailor had none, and that was because he had not an enemy.  No man in friendship with the world ever has calves to his legs.  To sum up all in a paradox of our own invention, for which we claim the full credit of originality, we now assert, that more men have risen in the world by the injury of their enemies, than have risen by the kindness of their friends.  You may take this, reader, in any sense; apply it to hanging if you like, it is still immutably and immovably true.