Sol Rollin was one of my studies that winter.  He was a carpenter by trade and his oddities were new and delightful.  He whistled as he worked, he whistled as he read, he whistled right merrily as he walked up and down the streets — a short, slight figure with a round boyish face and a fringe of iron-grey hair under his chin.  The little man had one big passion — that for getting and saving.  The ancient thrift of his race had pinched him small and narrow as a foot is stunted by a tight shoe.  His mind was a bit out of register as we say in the printing business.  His vocabulary was rich and vivid and stimulating.

‘Somebody broke into the arsenic today,’ he announced, one evening, at the supper table.

‘The arsenic,’ said somebody, ‘what arsenic?’

‘Why the place where they keep the powder,’ he answered.

‘Oh! the arsenal.’

‘Yes, the arsenal,’ he said, cackling with laughter at his error.  Then he grew serious.

‘Stole all the ambition out of it,’ he added.

‘You mean ammunition, don’t you, Solomon?’ his wife enquired.

‘Certainly,’ said he, ‘wasn’t that what I said.’

When he had said a thing that met his own approval Sol Rollin would cackle most cheerfully and then crack a knuckle by twisting a finger.  His laugh was mostly out of register also.  It had a sad lack of relevancy.  He laughed on principle rather than provocation.  Some sort of secret comedy of which the world knew nothing, was passing in his mind; it seemed to have its exits and its entrances, its villain, its clown and its miser who got all the applause.

While working his joy was unconfined.  Many a time I have sat and watched him in his little shop, its window dim with cobwebs.  Sometimes he would stop whistling and cackle heartily as he worked his plane or drew his pencil to the square.  I have even seen him drop his tools and give his undivided attention to laughter.  He did not like to be interrupted — he loved his own company the best while he was ‘doin’ business’.  I went one day when he was singing the two lines and their quaint chorus which was all he ever sang in my hearing; which gave him great relief, I have no doubt, when lip weary with whistling: 

Sez I ’Dan’l Skinner, I thank yer mighty mean To send me up the river, With a sev’n dollar team’ Lul-ly, ul — ly, diddie ul — ly, diddleul — lydee, Oh, lul-ly, ul — ly, diddle ul — ly, diddle ul — ly dee.

‘Mr Rollin!’ I said.

Yes siree,’ said he, pausing in the midst of his chorus to look up at me.

‘Where can I get a piece of yellow pine?’

’See ‘n a minute,’ he said.  Then he continued his sawing and his song, ’ “Says I Dan Skinner, I thank yer mighty mean” — what d’ ye want it fer?’ he asked stopping abruptly.

‘Going to make a ruler,’ I answered.

‘"T’ sen’ me up the river with a seven dollar team,"’ he went on, picking out a piece of smooth planed lumber, and handing it to me.