I struggled with him at first, but it was five to ten
minutes' work getting him away, and folks used to gather round and
bet on us. I think, maybe, I'd have stuck to it, however, if it
hadn't been for a temperance chap who stopped one day and lectured
the crowd about it from the opposite side of the street. He called
me Pilgrim, and said the little horse was 'Pollion,' or some such
name, and kept on shouting out that I was to fight him for a
heavenly crown. After that they called us "Polly and the Pilgrim,
fighting for the crown." It riled me, that did, and at the very
next house at which he pulled up I got down and said I'd come for
two of Scotch. That was the beginning. It took me years to break
myself of the habit.
"But there," he continued, "it has always been the same. I hadn't
been a fortnight in my first situation before my employer gave me a
goose weighing eighteen pounds as a Christmas present."
"Well, that couldn't have done you any harm," I remarked. "That
was lucky enough."
"So the other clerks said at the time," he replied. "The old
gentleman had never been known to give anything away before in his
life.
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