{"id":"01KG6G893PTYJ5810CBYF0NQRR","cid":"bafkreifbhykpjivp536w2hhec2eoguvfb2snmha2tayfp3vpt5wckwhlra","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":4895,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.150Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 10","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":4824,"text":"I found the civil-process enveloping the cigar. When I unrolled the\r\ncigar, I unrolled the civil-process, and the constable standing by\r\nrolled out, with a thick tongue, ‘Take notice!’ and added, in a whisper,\r\n‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it!’\r\n\r\nI turned short round upon the gentlemen then and there present in that\r\nbar-room. Said I, ‘Gentlemen, is this an honourable--nay, is this a\r\nlawful way of serving a civil-process? Behold!’\r\n\r\nOne and all they were of opinion that it was a highly inelegant act in\r\nthe constable to take advantage of a gentleman’s lunching on cheese and\r\nporter, to be so uncivil as to slip a civil-process into his hat. It was\r\nungenerous; it was cruel; for the sudden shock of the thing coming\r\ninstanter upon the lunch would impair the proper digestion of the\r\ncheese, which is proverbially not so easy of digestion as blanc-mange.\r\n\r\nArrived home, I read the process, and felt a twinge of melancholy.\r\nHard world! hard world! Here I am, as good a fellow as ever\r\nlived--hospitable--open-hearted--generous to a fault: and the Fates\r\nforbid that I should possess the fortune to bless the country\r\nwith my bounteousness. Nay, while many a stingy curmudgeon rolls in\r\nidle gold, I, heart of nobleness as I am, I have civil-processes\r\nserved on me! I bowed my head, and felt forlorn--unjustly\r\nused--abused--unappreciated--in short, miserable.\r\n\r\nHark! like a clarion! yea, like a jolly bolt of thunder with bells to\r\nit--came the all-glorious and defiant crow! Ye gods, how it set me up\r\nagain! Right on my pins! Yea, verily on stilts!\r\n\r\nOh, noble cock!\r\n\r\nPlain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Let the world and all aboard of it\r\ngo to pot. Do you be jolly, and never say die. What’s the world compared\r\nto you? What is it anyhow but a lump of loam? Do you be jolly!’\r\n\r\nOh, noble cock!\r\n\r\n‘But my dear and glorious cock,’ mused I, upon second thought, ‘one\r\ncan’t so easily send this world to pot; one can’t so easily be jolly\r\nwith civil-processes in his hat or hand.’\r\n\r\nHark! the crow again. Plain as cock could speak, it said: ‘Hang the\r\nprocess, and hang the fellow that sent it! If you have not land or cash,\r\ngo and thrash the fellow, and tell him you never mean to pay him. Be\r\njolly!’\r\n\r\nNow this was the way--through the imperative intimations of the\r\ncock--that I came to clap the added mortgage on my estate; paid all my\r\ndebts by fusing them into this one added bond and mortgage. Thus made at\r\nease again, I renewed my search for the noble cock. But in vain, though\r\nI heard him every day. I began to think there was some sort of deception\r\nin this mysterious thing: some wonderful ventriloquist prowled around my\r\nbarns, or in my cellar, or on my roof, and was minded to be gaily\r\nmischievous. But no--what ventriloquist could so crow with such an\r\nheroic and celestial crow?\r\n\r\nAt last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had\r\nsawed and split my wood in March--some five-and-thirty cords of it--and\r\nnow he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and\r\nspare, with a long, saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye,\r\nwhich offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but\r\nundepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat.\r\nThis man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all\r\nday long in a driving snowstorm, and never wink at it. He never spoke\r\nunless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw--snow, snow, snow. The\r\nsaw and the snow went together like two natural things. The first day\r\nthis man came, he brought his dinner with him, and volunteered to eat it\r\nsitting on his buck in the snowstorm. From my window, where I was\r\nreading Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act. I burst\r\nout of doors bare-headed. ‘Good heavens!’ cried I; ‘what are you doing?\r\nCome in. _This_ your dinner!’\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 10"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G6Q5SW6GV0037JNSFXSK6","peer_type":"article","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G893MYPT6VNHWX3PT52SS","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6G893P7JXY505Z931FPMF6","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:21.238Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:27.176Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}