"Well, now, I guess, friend, you an't far wide of your reckoning. I've
been a matter of some fifteen or twenty years knocking about, off and
on, in one way or another, with this same instrument, and pretty's the
service now, I tell ye, that it's done me in that bit of time."
"No doubt, no doubt; but what's your trade, if I may be so bold, that
made you larn the use of it so nicely?"
"Oh, what--my trade? Why, to say the truth, I never was brought up to
any trade in particular, but I am a pretty slick hand, now, I tell you,
at all of them. I've been in my time a little of a farmer, a little of a
merchant, a little of a sailor, and, somehow or other, a little of
everything, and all sort of things. My father was jest like myself, and
swore, before I was born, that I should be born jest like him--and so I
was. Never were two black peas more alike. He was a 'cute old fellow,
and swore he'd make me so too--and so he did. You know how he did
that?--now, I'll go a York shilling against a Louisiana bit, that you
can't tell to save you.
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