Salmagundi; or, The whim-whams and opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, esq. [pseud.] and others. By William Irving, James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving. Printed from the original ed., with a preface and notes by Evert A. Duyckinck.

THE POOR TURNSPIr. 355
The object of these direful suspicions remained for some time
totally ignorant of the wonderful quandary he had occasioned;
but he was soon doomed to feel its effects. An individual who
is once so unfortunate as to incur the odium of a village, is in a
great measure outlawed and proscribed; and becomes a mark
for injury and insult; particularly if he has not the power or the
disposition to recriminate. The little venomous passions, which
in the great world are dissipated and weakened by being widely
diffused, act in the narrow limits of a country town with collected vigor, and become rancorous in proportion as they are
confined in their sphere of action. The little man in black experienced the truth of this; every mischievous urchin returning
from school, had full liberty to break his windows; and this was
considered as a most daring exploit; for in such awe did they
stand of him, that the most adventurous school-boy was never
seen to approach his threshhold, and at night would prefer going
round by the cross-roads, where a traveller had been murdered
by the Indians, rather than pass by the door of his forlorn habitation.
The only living creature that seemed to have any care or
affection for this deserted being, was an old turnspit-the companion of his lonely mansion and his solitary wandering-the
sharer of his scanty meals, and —sorry I am to say it-the
sharer of his persecutions. The turnspit, like his master, was
peaceable and inoffensive; never known to bark at a horse, to
growl at a traveller, or to quarrel with the dogs of the nei(ghborhood. He followed close at his master's heels when he went
out, and when he returned stretched himself in the sunbeams at
the door; demeaning himself in all things like a civil and welldisposed turnspit. But notwithstanding his exemplary deportment, he fell likewise under the ill report of the village, as being