Trifles for the Christmas Holidays | Page 7

his nails; it creaked in his worn-out, down-trodden
shoes. Men, as he shambled by on the streets, unconsciously muttered,
"Beast!" women, shrinking from him, whispered, "Beast!" between the
heart-throbs the terror of his presence created; children, hushing their
cries in silent horror at his grimace, stared "Beast!" out of their
wonder-stricken eyes. You might bray him in a mortar and boil the
powder in a caldron, yet amid all the envy, hatred, and malice that
made up the ingredients, Beast would have triumphantly floated on the
top. Beast! Beast! Beast! Beast! The universal verdict clutched him like
the shirt of Nessus. He actually grew proud of the title, and received the
stigma with a cluck of beastly joy, as though inspired with a certain
beastly ambition to deserve it. The laugh with which he hailed any
appeal to his charity was monstrous. It commenced with a leathery
wheeze like the puff of asthmatic bellows; it croaked with a grating
chuckle, as if his throat opened on rusty hinges; and then it broke out in
a shrill vocal shudder, that sounded like the shriek of a hyena.
It is an idiosyncrasy of mine to foster just such pet abominations; and I
cultivated Hardy Gripstone. My advances were not encouraged by that
overweening tenderness that indicates the possible victim of misplaced
confidence. Far from "wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to
peck at," it seemed to have been weaned years agone, and my milk of
human kindness fell flat as any whipped syllabub.
Felicitous as were the suggestions of his suspicious brain, it took me
fully three months to descend in his bearish estimation from a
highwayman to a ninny. There was an incredibility in my apparent lack

of motive that puzzled him. His dubious cordiality was doled out under
protest. As an exhibitor would clutch a vicious ape, he grabbed at every
show of feeling, and almost throttled the most pitiful courtesy, in his
nervous dread of its doing him some bodily harm. There was a low
cunning in his very acceptance of any little kindness. The sly way in
which he insinuated his withered face into my morning papers, and the
smirk of satisfaction with which he gloated on the triumph of having
gratuitously gleaned their entire contents, was in keeping with every
other ludicrous phase of his distorted nature. He looked upon me as a
paragon of stupidity; and I fear I considered him a piece of personal
property, and felt as much pride in the possession as did Barnum in his
Aztec children.
I do not think the acquaintance tended in any way to exaggerate my
ideas of human purity. Though it extended through several years, no
guilty act I ever heard of detracted from his deserved reputation for
beastliness. My surmises never ventured to the hazardous period of
infancy, or risked the doubtful thought that kith or kin could have loved
him; but I have often wondered if there ever was a time when his
rapacity found employment in the robbing of a hen's nest, or his
grasping ambition culminated in the swop of a jack-knife. I wondered if
in all the grotesque concomitants that congregated to make up the
hideous whole, there existed a redeeming trait. Yes, there was
one,--one I discovered in the tears that sprung from his unrelenting eyes
and rained on his cadaverous cheeks. What was the anguish that shook
his beastly frame? what the agony that tore his grasping nature? who
was the Moses that smote water from this rock?
Dear hearers, it is here we find the text of the sermon, and here
commenceth the preaching.
* * * * *
Early one summer, the grasping little door bit to for good, and I missed
its mangy proprietor for probably four months. Had he planted himself
in the earth and regerminated, he could not have been more freshened.
His emaciated carcass fairly blossomed with magnificence; and gaudy
ornament sprouted all over him. It peeped through his shirt-front in

flashy studs, it twined on his fingers in glittering rings, it trailed around
his waist in glowing velvet, and expanded over his thin legs and arms
in a forest of broadcloth. 'Tis true, the shiny collar would get over his
ears, the coat-sleeves darkened every sparkle on his hands, and the
hems of his trowsers persisted in being trodden under heel; but what
were petty annoyances like these, in a renovation so complete? His face
had been shaved and polished until it approached in glistening
amiability the ivory head on a walking-stick; but there was an
uncertainty in its ripples of merriment impressive of the belief that if
once a genuine ha! ha! was ventured, the galvanized look of joy would
instantly vanish. It was at a very uncertain gait he sidled into