Being of an ingenious turn he
does painting, gilding, staining, upholstery jobs, varnishing, all in
addition to his primary trade of carpentry. But he is a man studious
of ease, and fully possessed with the idea that man wants but little
here below; so he boards himself in his workshop on crackers and
herring, washed down with cold water, and spends his time working,
musing, reading new publications, and taking his comfort. In his shop
you shall see a joiner's bench, hammers, planes, saws, gimlets,
varnish, paint, picture frames, fence posts, rare old china, one or
two fine portraits of his ancestry, a bookcase full of books, the
tooth of a whale, an old spinning-wheel and spindle, a lady's parasol
frame, a church lamp to be mended, in short, Henry says Mr. Titcomb's
shop is like the ocean; there is no end to the curiosities in it.
In all my moving and fussing Mr. Titcomb has been my right-hand man.
Whenever a screw was loose, a nail to be driven, a lock mended, a pane
of glass set, and these cases were manifold, he was always on hand.
But my sink was no fancy job, and I believe nothing but a very
particular friendship would have moved him to undertake it. So this
same sink lingered in a precarious state for some weeks, and when I
had _nothing else to do_, I used to call and do what I could in
the way of enlisting the good man's sympathies in its behalf.
How many times I have been in and seated myself in one of the old
rocking-chairs, and talked first of the news of the day, the railroad,
the last proceedings in Congress, the probabilities about the
millennium, and thus brought the conversation by little and little
round to my sink! .
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