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"'Why, sais I, 'Jeddediah, you ought to be more of a man than to take on that way. With no means to support your family of poor helpless little children, with no wife to look after them, and no airthly way to pay a woman to dry-nurse and starve the unfortunate baby, it's a mercy it did die, and was taken out of this wicked world.
Once, after having suffered the usual discipline of the horsepond, Dykes was carried before a Justice of Peace, and committed to Tothill Fields Bridewell . Here he became acquainted with one Jeddediah West, a Quaker's son, who had fallen into the like practices, and for them shared the same punishment with himself.
West, senior, soon finding out the contrivance, forever renounced him, and Jeddediah being soon after arrested for twelve pounds due to his tailor, was carried to prison and remained there without the least assistance from his brother, till after his friend Dykes was hanged.
They were pretty much of a temper, but Jeddediah was the elder and much the more subtle of the two, and in this unhappy place they contracted a strict and intimate friendship. Out of shame Jeddediah forbore for two or three days to acquaint his relations, and during that time for the most part subsisted out of what Dykes got from home.
"Jeddediah Jodkins!" said Eph, as he swung an eccentric curve about the gatepost; "do you whoa! suppose I'm such a whoa! whoa! fool that I don't know that I'm not riding whoa! in a whoa! whoa! wagon?" And with this Eph vanished up street in the wake of the galloping horse, still clinging valiantly to the reins.
"Jeddediah Jodkins!" he said; "if that is any more people bringing things to eat to this house, they'll have to go away. We can't have it. We've got enough here now to feed a a boarding school." The heaven-born inventor sprang eagerly to his feet. "Don't you do it, Eph," he said, "don't you do it. I've just thought of a way to can it."
About the time that he knew his brother was to come home from the Exchange to dinner, he went to his house equipped in a sailor's pea-jacket, his hair cropped short to his ears, his eyebrows coloured black, and a handkerchief about his neck. As soon as he saw him in the counting-house, his brother started back, and cried, Bless me! Jeddediah, how came you in this pickle?
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