Wicks

“ Wicks, perceiving this, said contemptuously: "All the world knows me to be a man, and such a man am I that, although your lordship could, in a cowardly manner, murder Mumford the actor, and Captain Cout, I am by no means afraid of you. ”

“ Wicks grasped at the remnant of his courage.
“Because I have always admired you above all other men. I can't make you realize what you stand for to me. Bigness. That's it. And although I'm only a small tradesman, I've felt bigness, too—inside me. And I've felt it wonderful that we should pair like we do. In looks too. I've often been mistaken for you.”
Bolingbroke scrutinized him intently.
“Strange,” he said at last, “that a man should not know his own face! Well—what do you make of it all—my Double?”
Wicks caught at the words. ”

“ A few nights later, as Dick sat at his work in Mr. Wicks' office, a rubber-tired buggy drove slowly past close to the curbing. Through the big front window, Dick could be seen plainly as he bent over his desk, just inside an inner room, his back toward the door, which stood open. A burly negro leaped to the sidewalk without stopping the carriage. So absorbed was Dick with the task before him, that he did not hear the outer door of the office open and close again; and so quickly did the negro move that he stood within the room where Dick sat before the latter was aware of his presence. ”

“ He is a capital man of business,” said Wicks, in a tone of the deepest admiration, “capital, isn’t he?”
The other three cordially subscribed to this opinion, and the anecdote afforded the most unlimited satisfaction.
“Nice men these here, sir,” whispered Mr. Weller to his master; “wery nice notion of fun they has, sir.”
Mr. Pickwick nodded assent, and coughed to attract the attention of the young gentlemen behind the partition, who, having now relaxed their minds by a little conversation among themselves, condescended to take some notice of the stranger. ”

“ Wicks; it’s a Christian act to do it, Mr. Wicks, for with his large family and small income, he’ll be all the better for a good lesson against getting into debt—won’t he, Mr. Wicks, won’t he?”—and he smiled so good–naturedly as he went away, that it was delightful to see him. ”

“ A fierce composure settled upon Wicks and Carthew, their fighting second wind. They posted Tommy at the fore and Amalu at the main to guard the masts and shrouds, and going themselves into the waist, poured out a box of cartridges on deck and filled the chambers. The poor devils aloft bleated aloud for mercy. ”

“ Wicks," said the fat man, "he can easily have what he wants. It's only a matter o' two mile to the Squire's."
"Squire'll welly go off 'is yed," remarked the host. "He's that sot on seeing Swift Nicks swing."
"Then he'll very likely go bail for Mr. Wicks," said I.
"Will he?" said Mr. Wicks sourly.
"If he don't," I retorted, "you'll spend the night in Leicester jail."
"They do say as 'ow Swift Nicks is a rare plucked 'un," said the ostler.
"Then they're liars," said I.
I was handcuffed and put on Sultan, with my feet roped together under his belly. ”

“ Wicks said couldn’t be killed, for no matter how cold the kitchen was, it lived, winter after winter, if protected by a paper at night.
“I wish you’d come and live with me all winter,” [222] the old lady said, when Ward brought in six eggs he had found in the henhouse and Fred and Artie reported that a path had been swept out to the mail-box. “I like company. One of my nieces comes to stay with me part of the time, and she’s coming the day after New Year’s. But she isn’t young like you.” ”

“ The belief is that the right hand of a hanged man, cut off and dried over the smoke of certain wood and herbs, and then provided with wicks at each finger made of the dead man's hair, becomes, when lighted at each wick (the wicks are greased, of course) , a charm, whereby a thief may walk without hinderance where he pleases in a strange house, push open all doors and take what he likes. ”

“ Can't go against Destiny. Bolingbroke smashed and I——'”
“Bolingbroke? What has Bolingbroke to do with you? Look!” May's voice rose in an hysterical note. “Look at the check! Can't you realize it?”
Instead of obeying her, Carolus Wicks looked in the glass.
He saw a man with an ill-proportioned head, a shock of rough hair, plebeian features, watery eyes and a tremendous mouth. A face totally lacking in distinction. The face of a nonenity. The face of any small man—of any little tradesman. ”

“ Wicks was accordingly acquitted, on the failure of this suborned prosecutor to swear to him; and was immediately on the road again; this time in partnership with a certain Joe Johnson, alias Saunders. Near Colnbrook they held up a stage-coach containing four gentlemen, one of whom discharged a blunderbuss at the luckless Joe, who received seven or eight bullets, and was thus wounded so severely that he was easily seized: the more easily in that Wicks instantly made off, with the speed of the wind. ”

“ It was a minute before folks caught on—and then you should have heard the laugh. Jupiter, Jupiter Peabody—a mule. And he’d been elected the handsomest man in Wicksville. Everybody, including even Chet and Chancy, roared so hard they almost choked, and they pounded each other on the back and danced up and down and shrieked. It was the funniest joke that ever happened in Wicksville.
Maybe if a real man had won the losers would have been mad, but nobody won but a mule! ”

“ My! when they was learning but Wicksville was an unhealthy place early in the morning and at night. Everywhere you turned there was a fellow sitting with his eyes shut and his cheeks puffed out, trying to make a noise on a barytone or an alto or a trombone. Mostly for the first week they couldn’t make any noise at all, except now and then by accident, and that noise would be the worst kind of a blatt you ever heard. It got so bad, after a while, that the Town Board give orders nobody should practise on a horn in the corporate limits before five in the morning and after nine at night. ”

“ Snodgrass, as the equestrian came trotting up on the tall horse, with his hat over his ears, and shaking all over, as if he would shake to pieces, with the violence of the exercise, ‘pick up the whip, there’s a good fellow.’ Mr. Winkle pulled at the bridle of the tall horse till he was black in the face; and having at length succeeded in stopping him, dismounted, handed the whip to Mr. Pickwick, and grasping the reins, prepared to remount. ”

“ Wilks, unasked, poured himself out another glass of ale, and drank it off with the air of a man who intended to make sure of that. It seemed a trifle more flat than the last.
"So many men o' your age and thereabouts," continued Mr. Silk, "think that they're going to live on to eighty or ninety, but there's very few of 'em do. It's only a short while, Mr. Wilks, and the little children'll be running about over your grave and picking daisies off of it." ”

“ The sun had only just passed below the horizon, the sky immediately above it being a rippled glory of gold, merging higher up into gold flecked with crimson, then into a placid sea of pale apple-green. Above this were fleecy clouds of delicate rose-pink, which reflected their splendours upon the higher parts of the surrounding hills, the latter standing out clear and sharp, and glowing with roseate hues, whilst their bases were seen dimly as through a thin veiling of purple mist. ”

“ Chris muttered as they came to the marsh.
"Yes, the twentieth century has many conveniences," Mr. Wicker replied, and Chris could imagine, behind him, the man's sardonic smile and amused eyes.
They came out suddenly from the blackness of the woods to the wind-whipped river, and though the moon was still obscured, the river held a pallid sheen of its own that gave a little light. There was not a sound to be heard but the hurried lap of water against the shore, the suck and pull of Chris's and Mr. Wicker's boots in the mud, and sharp, hair-raising rustles, from time to time, in the reeds. ”

“ Mr. Wilks closed his eyes with a snap and his heart turned to water. He held his breath and ran-sacked his brain in vain for a reply which should ignore the inner meaning of the fatal words. Something careless and jocular he wanted, combined with a voice which should be perfectly under control. Failing these things, he kept his eyes closed, and, very wide-awake indeed, feigned sleep. He slept straight away from eleven o'clock in the morning until Edward Silk came in at seven o'clock in the evening.
"I feel like a new man," he said, rubbing his eyes and yawning. ”

“ Not until she entered the great bend of Vicksburg did she once come into contrast with anything that could in any degree diminish her regal supremacy. There, as day was breaking, she entered the deep shadow of the southernmost "Walnut Hill." The town on its crest was two hundred feet above her lower deck, and the stiff Yazoo squire, his kindly brother-in-law and sister and the Vicksburg merchant and his wife, waiting down there while she slowed up to the wharf-boat at its foot to let them and others off, were proud of the bluff and of the two miles of sister hills hid by it and the night. ”

“ Mr. Wicker continued, "for it is well guarded. But there is a greater hazard." He rose from his chair to walk about in his nervousness and eagerness at what lay ahead. Then he went on.
"There is a man here, posing as a merchant. Claggett Chew. You will see him in the town when you walk there, which you shall do, presently. But he has some magic powers, and knows me well. Too well." Mr. Wicker shook his head and his eyes became slits of rage. "We have been enemies for long," said Mr. Wicker, "but he has yet to get the better of me."
"Is he after the Jewel Tree too?" Chris wanted to know. ”

“ What's the best path into Vicksburg?”
“See that little openin' in the bushes. Follow it. Jest over the hill you'll run into a passel of our fellers, but pay no 'tention to 'em. If they ask you who you are an' whar you're boun' tell 'em to go straight to blazes, while you go to Vicksburg.”
“Thank you,” said Dick, “I like to meet an obliging and polite man like you. It helps even in war.” ”

“ Wickes!" said Captain Francis Newcombe imperturbably. "And for three years Polly has been in one of the most exclusive girls' seminaries in America—and incidentally I might say I am arranging to go over there shortly for a little visit. If her photographs are to be relied upon, she has more than fulfilled her early promise. A very beautiful young woman, educated, and now, Mrs. Wickes—a lady. She has made a circle of friends among the best and the wealthiest. ”

“ He is a wise youth, to be sure, who can balance one part of genuine life against two parts of drudgery between four walls, and for the sake of the one, manfully accept the other.
Wick was scarce an eligible place of stay. But how much better it was to hang in the cold wind upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and shouting orders—not always very wise—than to be warm and dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most comfortable office. And Wick itself had in those days a note of originality. ”

“ Wicker had come within a few feet of Chris, the final vestiges of daylight from outside reached the extraordinary man facing the boy, and for the first time Chris was able to examine the old man who was more legend than fact throughout Georgetown.
William Wicker's face in itself was not forbidding. What made an icy mouse seem to run the length of Chris's spine was the impression of enormous age in the appearance of the man confronting him. The thin lips crackled the withered and multi-wrinkled cheeks in the ghost of what had once been a smile. ”

“ Winkle.
‘I,’ replied Mr. Pickwick mildly. ‘In affording you this interview, the young lady has taken a natural, perhaps, but still a very imprudent step. If I am present at the meeting—a mutual friend, who is old enough to be the father of both parties—the voice of calumny can never be raised against her hereafter.’
Mr. Pickwick’s eyes lightened with honest exultation at his own foresight, as he spoke thus. Mr. Winkle was touched by this little trait of his delicate respect for the young protegee of his friend, and took his hand with a feeling of regard, akin to veneration. ”

“ Winkle, angrily.
‘Never mind, Sir, never mind,’ replied the long gamekeeper; ‘I’ve no family myself, sir; and this here boy’s mother will get something handsome from Sir Geoffrey, if he’s killed on his land. Load again, Sir, load again.’
‘Take away his gun,’ cried Mr. Pickwick from the barrow, horror–stricken at the long man’s dark insinuations. ‘Take away his gun, do you hear, somebody?’
Nobody, however, volunteered to obey the command; and Mr. Winkle, after darting a rebellious glance at Mr. Pickwick, reloaded his gun, and proceeded onwards with the rest. ”

“ It sounded like several pairs of new boots all squeaking at once, but Mr. Vickers, who was a reasonable man and past the age of self-deception, sought for a more probable cause.
A particularly aggressive squeak detached itself from the others and sounded on the stairs. The resemblance to the noise made by new boots was stronger than ever. It was new boots. The door opened, and Mr. Vickers, with a slice of bread arrested half-way to his mouth, sat gazing in astonishment at Charles Vickers, clad for the first time in his life in new raiment from top to toe. ”

“ Ned Cilley, with his hand on Amos's shoulder, moved off to point out some detail of the Mirabelle, and Chris and Mr. Wicker were left alone. Mr. Wicker looked down kindly at the boy, but there was a sadness also in his face.
"Perhaps," he said as if to himself, "I have set you too great a task, my poor Christopher, for you are but a boy." He laid his hand on Chris's arm. "You are a boy, but what lies before you is a man's task, and no mistake. You cannot in the future allow yourself the luxury of such childish enjoyments as a laugh at Claggett Chew, or his friend!" ”