The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous
testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind
together over mistakes committed in copying; unnecessary maledictions,
hissed, rather than spoken, in the heat of business; and especially by a
continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked.
Though of a very ingenious mechanical turn, Nippers could never get this
table to suit him. He put chips under it, blocks of various sorts, bits
of pasteboard, and at last went so far as to attempt an exquisite
adjustment by final pieces of folded blotting paper. But no invention
would answer. If, for the sake of easing his back, he brought the table
lid at a sharp angle well up towards his chin, and wrote there like a
man using the steep roof of a Dutch house for his desk:--then he
declared that it stopped the circulation in his arms. If now he lowered
the table to his waistbands, and stooped over it in writing, then there
was a sore aching in his back.
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