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The boat passed beyond the fumes of the pyres, and came up to the ghat, at the request of Lord Tremlyn. A multitude of hideous-looking cripples, humpbacks, and beggars made an onslaught on the steamer; and the boys and gentlemen pelted them with coppers, with which they had been forewarned to supply themselves. It was fun to them, and the mendicants enjoyed it quite as much.
Mizzle was prematurely bald being quite a young man and when questioned on the subject, he usually attributed it to the fact of his having been so long employed about the cooking coppers, that the excessive heat to which he was exposed had stewed all the hair off his head!
One little blind boy, led by his brother, both frightfully ugly and ragged urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining 'Signore Padrone! It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us.
Shortly after Mahmoud's death the prosperity of the firm had already given rise to a new proverb, and men said: "Do you think I am Mahmoud's-Nephew?" when they were asked to lend money or in some other way to jeopardize a few coppers in the service of God or their neighbour.
The Germans who employ spies so extensively pay them extraordinarily little. They treat them like scurvy dogs, for whom any old bone is good enough, and I'm not sure they are not right. They go on the principle that the white trash who will sell their country need only to be paid with kicks and coppers.
Once, after receiving a silver fourpenny piece, an extraordinary and undreamed of event, Tony dropped it, almost with a feeling of guilt, through the slit in the counter which communicated with the till. But Oliver was so bewildered by its presence among the coppers, that he was compelled to confess what he had done, saying it would have cost him more than that for lodgings these cold nights.
He came there originally to save money; and he stayed there originally because, if he had happened to die on his homeward journey, there would not have been enough coppers in his pocket to pay for the funeral expenses.
After all this had been fully explained to them, with a long talk and discussion between every sentence, I could see that I had made a favourable impression; and that very afternoon, as if to test my promise to buy even miserable little snail-shells, a dozen children came one after another, bringing me a few specimens each of a small Helix, for which they duly received "coppers," and went away amazed but rejoicing.
"I know you would, Dicky, I know you would," he at length uttered, grasping the hand of Barnstable with a portion of his former strength; "I know you would give the old woman one of your own limbs, if it would do a service to the mother of a messmate which it would not seeing that I am not the son of a cannibal; but you are out of your own father's books, and it's too often shoal water in your pockets to help any one more especially since you have just been spliced to a pretty young body that will want all your spare coppers."
One of these helices was connected with a galvanometer and the other with a battery of a hundred pairs of plates four inches square, with double coppers and well charged. When the contact was made, there was a sudden and very slight effect at the galvanometer, and there was also a similar slight effect when the contact with the battery was broken.
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