SINGULAR TABLE--NO MONEY--OUT OF EMPLOY--MY BONNET--WE OF THE
THIMBLE--GOOD WAGES--WISELY RESOLVED--STRANGEST WAY IN THE WORLD--FAT
GENTLEMAN--NOT SUCH ANOTHER--FIRST EDITION--NOT EASY--WON'T CLOSE--AVELLA
GORGIO--ALARMED LOOK
Presently a man emerged from the tent, bearing before him a rather
singular table; it appeared to be of white deal, was exceedingly small at
the top, and with very long legs. At a few yards from the entrance he
paused, and looked round, as if to decide on the direction which he
should take; presently, his eye glancing on me as I lay upon the ground,
he started, and appeared for a moment inclined to make off as quick as
possible, table and all. In a moment, however, he seemed to recover
assurance, and, coming up to the place where I was, the long legs of the
table projecting before him, he cried, 'Glad to see you here, my lord.'
'Thank you,' said I, 'it's a fine day.'
'Very fine, my lord; will your lordship play? Them that finds,
wins--them that don't finds, loses.'
'Play at what?' said I.
'Only at the thimble and pea, my lord.'
'I never heard of such a game.'
'Didn't you? Well, I'll soon teach you,' said he, placing the table
down. 'All you have to do is to put a sovereign down on my table, and to
find the pea, which I put under one of my thimbles. If you find it,--and
it is easy enough to find it,--I give you a sovereign besides your own:
for them that finds, wins.'
'And them that don't finds, loses,' said I; 'no, I don't wish to play.'
'Why not, my lord?'
'Why, in the first place, I have no money.'
'Oh, you have no money, that of course alters the case. If you have no
money, you can't play. Well, I suppose I must be seeing after my
customers,' said he, glancing over the plain.
'Good-day,' said I.
'Good-day,' said the man slowly, but without moving, and as if in
reflection. After a moment or two, looking at me inquiringly, he added,
'Out of employ?'
'Yes,' said I, 'out of employ.'
The man measured me with his eye as I lay on the ground. At length he
said, 'May I speak a word or two to you, my lord?'
'As many as you please,' said I.
'Then just come a little out of hearing, a little farther on the grass,
if you please, my lord.'
'Why do you call me my lord?' said I, as I arose and followed him.
'We of the thimble always calls our customers lords,' said the man; 'but
I won't call you such a foolish name any more; come along.'
The man walked along the plain till he came to the side of a dry pit,
when, looking round to see that no one was nigh, he laid his table on the
grass, and, sitting down with his legs over the side of the pit, he
motioned me to do the same. 'So you are in want of employ?' said he,
after I had sat down beside him.
'Yes,' said I, 'I am very much in want of employ.'
'I think I can find you some.'
'What kind?' said I.
'Why,' said the man, 'I think you would do to be my bonnet.'
'Bonnet!' said I, 'what is that?'
'Don't you know? However, no wonder, as you had never heard of the
thimble and pea game, but I will tell you. We of the game are very much
exposed; folks when they have lost their money, as those who play with us
mostly do, sometimes uses rough language, calls us cheats, and sometimes
knocks our hats over our eyes; and what's more, with a kick under our
table, cause the top deals to fly off; this is the third table I have
used this day, the other two being broken by uncivil customers: so we of
the game generally like to have gentlemen go about with us to take our
part, and encourage us, though pretending to know nothing about us; for
example, when the customer says, "I'm cheated," the bonnet must say, "No,
you ain't, it is all right"; or, when my hat is knocked over my eyes, the
bonnet must square, and say, "I never saw the man before in all my life,
but I won't see him ill-used"; and so, when they kicks at the table, the
bonnet must say, "I won't see the table ill-used, such a nice table, too;
besides, I want to play myself"; and then I would say to the bonnet,
"Thank you, my lord, them that finds, wins"; and then the bonnet plays,
and I lets the bonnet win.'
'In a word,' said I, 'the bonnet means the man who covers you, even as
the real bonnet covers the head.'
'Just so,' said the man; 'I see you are awake, and would soon make a
first-rate bonnet.'
'Bonnet,' said I, musingly; 'bonnet; it is metaphorical.'
'Is it?' said the man.
'Yes,' said I, 'like the cant words--'
'Bonnet is cant,' said the man; 'we of the thimble, as well as all
cly-fakers and the like, understand cant, as, of course, must every
bonnet; so, if you are employed by me, you had better learn it as soon as
you can, that we may discourse together without being understood by every
one. Besides covering his principal, a bonnet must have his eyes about
him, for the trade of the pea, though a strictly honest one, is not
altogether lawful; so it is the duty of the bonnet, if he sees the
constable coming, to say, The gorgio's welling.'
'That is not cant,' said I, 'that is the language of the Rommany Chals.'
'Do you know those people?' said the man.
'Perfectly,' said I, 'and their language too.'
'I wish I did,' said the man; 'I would give ten pounds and more to know
the language of the Rommany Chals. There's some of it in the language of
the pea and thimble; how it came there I don't know, but so it is. I
wish I knew it, but it is difficult. You'll make a capital bonnet; shall
we close?'
'What would the wages be?' I demanded.
'Why, to a first-rate bonnet, as I think you would prove, I could afford
to give from forty to fifty shillings a week.'
'Is it possible?' said I.
'Good wages, ain't they?' said the man.
'First-rate,' said I; 'bonneting is more profitable than reviewing.'
'Anan?' said the man.
'Or translating; I don't think the Armenian would have paid me at that
rate for translating his Esop.'
'Who is he?' said the man.
'Esop?'
'No, I know what that is, Esop's cant for a hunchback; but t'other?'
'You should know,' said I.
'Never saw the man in all my life.'
'Yes, you have,' said I, 'and felt him too; don't you remember the
individual from whom you took the pocket-book?'
'Oh, that was he; well, the less said about that matter the better; I
have left off that trade, and taken to this, which is a much better.
Between ourselves, I am not sorry that I did not carry off that
pocket-book; if I had, it might have encouraged me in the trade, in which
had I remained, I might have been lagged, sent abroad, as I had been
already imprisoned; so I determined to leave it off at all hazards,
though I was hard up, not having a penny in the world.'
'And wisely resolved,' said I; 'it was a bad and dangerous trade, I
wonder you should ever have embraced it.'
'It is all very well talking,' said the man, 'but there is a reason for
everything; I am the son of a Jewess, by a military officer'--and then
the man told me his story. I shall not repeat the man's story, it was a
poor one, a vile one; at last he observed, 'So that affair which you know
of determined me to leave the filching trade, and take up with a more
honest and safe one; so at last I thought of the pea and thimble, but I
wanted funds, especially to pay for lessons at the hands of a master, for
I knew little about it.'
'Well,' said I, 'how did you get over that difficulty?'
'Why,' said the man, 'I thought I should never have got over it. What
funds could I raise? I had nothing to sell; the few clothes I had I
wanted, for we of the thimble must always appear decent, or nobody would
come near us. I was at my wits' ends; at last I got over my difficulty
in the strangest way in the world.'
'What was that?'
'By an old thing which I had picked up some time before--a book.'
'A book?' said I.
'Yes, which I had taken out of your lordship's pocket one day as you were
walking the streets in a great hurry. I thought it was a pocket-book at
first, full of bank-notes, perhaps,' continued he, laughing. 'It was
well for me, however, that it was not, for I should have soon spent the
notes; as it was, I had flung the old thing down with an oath, as soon as
I brought it home. When I was so hard up, however, after the affair with
that friend of yours, I took it up one day, and thought I might make
something by it to support myself a day with. Chance or something else
led me into a grand shop; there was a man there who seemed to be the
master, talking to a jolly, portly old gentleman, who seemed to be a
country squire. Well, I went up to the first, and offered it for sale;
he took the book, opened it at the title-page, and then all of a sudden
his eyes glistened, and he showed it to the fat, jolly gentleman, and his
eyes glistened too, and I heard him say "How singular!" and then the two
talked together in a speech I didn't understand--I rather thought it was
French, at any rate it wasn't cant; and presently the first asked me what
I would take for the book. Now I am not altogether a fool, nor am I
blind, and I had narrowly marked all that passed, and it came into my
head that now was the time for making a man of myself, at any rate I
could lose nothing by a little confidence; so I looked the man boldly in
the face, and said, "I will have five guineas for that book, there ain't
such another in the whole world." "Nonsense," said the first man, "there
are plenty of them, there have been nearly fifty editions, to my
knowledge; I will give you five shillings." "No," said I, "I'll not take
it, for I don't like to be cheated, so give me my book again"; and I
attempted to take it away from the fat gentleman's hand. "Stop," said
the younger man; "are you sure that you won't take less?" "Not a
farthing," said I; which was not altogether true, but I said so. "Well,"
said the fat gentleman, "I will give you what you ask"; and sure enough
he presently gave me the money; so I made a bow, and was leaving the
shop, when it came into my head that there was something odd in all this,
and, as I had the money in my pocket, I turned back, and, making another
bow, said, "May I be so bold as to ask why you gave me all this money for
that 'ere dirty book? When I came into the shop, I should have been glad
to get a shilling for it; but I saw you wanted it, and asked five
guineas." Then they looked at one another, and smiled, and shrugged up
their shoulders. Then the first man, looking at me, said, "Friend, you
have been a little too sharp for us; however, we can afford to forgive
you, as my friend here has long since been in quest of this particular
book; there are plenty of editions, as I told you, and a common copy is
not worth five shillings; but this is a first edition; and a copy of the
first edition is worth its weight in gold."'
'So, after all, they outwitted you,' I observed.
'Clearly,' said the man; 'I might have got double the price, had I known
the value; but I don't care, much good may it do them, it has done me
plenty. By means of it I have got into an honest, respectable trade, in
which there's little danger and plenty of profit, and got out of one
which would have got me lagged, sooner or later.'
'But,' said I, 'you ought to remember that the thing was not yours; you
took it from me, who had been requested by a poor old apple-woman to
exchange it for a Bible.'
'Well,' said the man, 'did she ever get her Bible?'
'Yes,' said I, 'she got her Bible.'
'Then she has no cause to complain; and, as for you, chance or something
else has sent you to me, that I may make you reasonable amends for any
loss you may have had. Here am I ready to make you my bonnet, with forty
or fifty shillings a week, which you say yourself are capital wages.'
'I find no fault with the wages,' said I, 'but I don't like the employ.'
'Not like bonneting,' said the man; 'ah, I see, you would like to be
principal; well, a time may come--those long white fingers of yours would
just serve for the business.'
'Is it a difficult one?' I demanded.
'Why, it is not very easy: two things are needful--natural talent, and
constant practice; but I'll show you a point or two connected with the
game'; and, placing his table between his knees as he sat over the side
of the pit, he produced three thimbles, and a small brown pellet,
something resembling a pea. He moved the thimble and pellet about, now
placing it to all appearance under one, and now under another; 'Under
which is it now?' he said at last. 'Under that,' said I, pointing to the
lowermost of the thimbles, which, as they stood, formed a kind of
triangle. 'No,' said he, 'it is not, but lift it up'; and, when I lifted
up the thimble, the pellet, in truth, was not under it. 'It was under
none of them,' said he, 'it was pressed by my little finger against my
palm'; and then he showed me how he did the trick, and asked me if the
game was not a funny one; and, on my answering in the affirmative, he
said, 'I am glad you like it; come along and let us win some money.'
Thereupon, getting up, he placed the table before him, and was moving
away; observing, however, that I did not stir, he asked me what I was
staying for. 'Merely for my own pleasure,' said I; 'I like sitting here
very well.' 'Then you won't close?' said the man. 'By no means,' I
replied; 'your proposal does not suit me.' 'You may be principal in
time,' said the man. 'That makes no difference,' said I; and, sitting
with my legs over the pit, I forthwith began to decline an Armenian noun.
'That ain't cant,' said the man; 'no, nor gypsy either. Well, if you
won't close, another will, I can't lose any more time,' and forthwith he
departed.
And after I had declined four Armenian nouns, of different declensions, I
rose from the side of the pit, and wandered about amongst the various
groups of people scattered over the green. Presently I came to where the
man of the thimbles was standing, with the table before him, and many
people about him. 'Them who finds, wins, and them who can't find,
loses,' he cried. Various individuals tried to find the pellet, but all
were unsuccessful, till at last considerable dissatisfaction was
expressed, and the terms rogue and cheat were lavished upon him. 'Never
cheated anybody in all my life,' he cried; and, observing me at hand,
'didn't I play fair, my lord?' he inquired. But I made no answer.
Presently some more played, and he permitted one or two to win, and the
eagerness to play with him became greater. After I had looked on for
some time, I was moving away: just then I perceived a short, thick
personage, with a staff in his hand, advancing in a great hurry;
whereupon, with a sudden impulse, I exclaimed--
SHOON THIMBLE ENGRO;
AVELLA GORGIO.
The man, who was in the midst of his pea-and-thimble process, no sooner
heard the last word of the distich than he turned an alarmed look in the
direction of where I stood; then, glancing around, and perceiving the
constable, he slipped forthwith his pellet and thimbles into his pocket,
and, lifting up his table, he cried to the people about him, 'Make way!'
and with a motion with his head to me, as if to follow him, he darted off
with a swiftness which the short, pursy constable could by no means
rival; and whither he went, or what became of him, I know not, inasmuch
as I turned away in another direction.