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So perhaps, after all, you did a good thing to enlist your brother in our behalf." "I hope so, sir. I meant no harm; really I didn't." "There, there, don't think of it again," said Mr. Crowninshield kindly. "I should have remembered you are not a man's age and cannot be expected to have the judgment that goes with fifty or sixty years of living. Even old codgers like myself blunder sometimes."
My uncle Sam is more anxious about my sins than the other codgers, because he is my godfather, and responsible for my sins, I suppose; and he says he will put me in the way of being respectable. My head's splitting " "Wood does split till it is seasoned," answered Losely. "Good fellow, uncle Sam! He'll put you in the way of tin; nothing else makes a man respectable."
We'd feel pretty glum if we got stuck in some Main Street burg and tried to wise up the old codgers to the kind of life we're used to here. But, by golly, there's this you got to say for 'em: Every small American town is trying to get population and modern ideals. And darn if a lot of 'em don't put it across!
That is another tale, however; and on this Sunday the drinking was productive only of considerable noise and boasting. Two old codgers, head to head, were bragging laboriously of their prowess as cooks. A small but interested group egged them on. "Flapjacks?" enunciated one laboriously; "flapjacks? Why, my fren', you don't know nothin' about flapjacks.
I lost my head one day and began to argue the question of perspective with a couple of old codgers who were criticizing a bit of foreshortening that was my special pet. I forgot my goggles and sailed in. The game was up then, of course; and I never put them on again. But it was worth a farm to see their faces when I stood 'discovered' as the stage-folk say."
Like one time, when I was about sixteen years old, and in the possession of positive and definite information about the way the earth went around the sun and all, I was arguing with one of these old codgers that think they know it all, one of these men that think it is so smart to tell you: "Sonny, when you get older, you'll know more 'n you do now I hope."
"Neither can I." "You could if you wiped your eyes." "You're crying yourself," declared Cutty. "Blinking jackass! Got anybody out there?" "All of 'em." "I get you, old son of a gun! No flesh and blood, but they're ours all the same. Couple of old fools; huh?" "Sure pop! What right have two old codgers got here, anyhow? What brought you out?" "What brought you?" "Same thing." "Damn it!
Because I do not love bawling and galloping after a fox, like the captain yonder, I am not his superior; but, in this respect, humbly own that he is mine. He has perceptions which are denied me; enjoyments which I cannot understand. Because I am blind the world is not dark. I try now and listen with respect when Squire Codgers talks of the day's run.
Corny enjoyed this walk, because we went right into the houses and talked to the people, and bought cocoa-nuts off the trees, and ate the inside custard with a spoon, and made the little codgers race for pennies, and tried all the different kinds of fruits. She said she would like to walk out with us always, but her mother said she must not be going about too much with boys.
When they had had as much as I thought good for them, I pulled up, and several old codgers went over their nags' heads, of course. But all I said was that as the claimants had come in level, it was clear the land was to be divided between them, and we went back and did it there and then.
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