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I'm plumb callow at the time, bein' only about the size an' valyoo of a pa'r of fives. but I'm plenty impressed by them events I'm about to recount, an' the mem'ry is fresh enough for yesterday. But to come flutterin' from my perch. Thar's a sport who makes his home- camp in that hamlet which fosters my infancy; that is, he's thar about six months in the year.
I buried my head in the papers again. Blackie went on smoking. There was no sound in the little room except the purr-purring of Blackie's pipe. Then: "I done a favor for Wheeling once," mused he. I glanced up, quickly. "Oh, Blackie, do you think " "No, I don't. But then again, you can't never tell. That was four or five years ago, and the mem'ry of past favors grows dim fast.
I wasn' bad all the time, I must tell you, sir; but 'tis only lately my mem'ry would work any further back 'n the wreck o' the barque. Everything seemed to begin an' end wi' that. 'Tis about a year back that some visitors came to the 'sylum. There was a lady in the party, an' something in her face, when she spoke to me, put me in mind o' Na'mi, an' I remembered I was a married man.
"That's wery odd," says the gen'l'm'n." "Wery," says my father. "You must have a bad mem'ry, Mr. Weller," says the gen'l'm'n. "Well, it is a wery bad 'un," says my father. "I thought so," says the gen'l'm'n. So then they pours him out a glass of wine, and gammons him about his driving, and gets him into a reg'lar good humour, and at last shoves a twenty-pound note into his hand.
Ever know any folks there, George?" "Don't have no mem'ry for 'em, Doctah." "You're lucky again. They're the orneriest, lowest-down, minchin', pinchin', pizen trash that ever tainted the sweet air of Heaven by breathing it, George." "You don' sesso, Doctah Suhtaine, suh." "I do sess precisely so, George. Does the name McQuiggan mean anything to you?" "Don' mean nothin' at-tall to me, Doctah."
"You're not, son," agreed "Scotty" heartily. "Your mother's right." "My father was allers called Honest Ben Edwards out here on the Third Beach Line, an' Mother says she'd ruther have that mem'ry o' him than all the fortunes that's been made in Alaska by lyin' an' steal-in' an' jumpin' other people's claims." "Right again, Ben.
What are you talkin' about? Why, Louada Murilla, I never even knowed what the Portygee's name was, except that I called him Joe. A skipper don't lo'd his mem'ry with that sculch any more'n he'd try to find names for the hens in the deck-coop. "I made a mistake," he continued, after a time, "in not havin' it cleaned up, decks washed, and everything clewed snug at the time of it.
"'Now this is where that bluff about bread on the waters comes in; an' it falls so pat on the heels of them devotions of mine, it he'ps brand it on my mem'ry. While I'm layin' thar, an' mighty likely while them coyotes is lunchin' offen my scabbard that a-way, along comes a rank stranger they calls Spanish Bill. "'I learns afterward how this Spanish Bill is hard, plumb through.
"Well, I expect he hated that worse, having to receive my explanation with folks lookin' on at us publicly that-a-way, and him without further ideas occurrin' to him at the moment. That's what started his poor opinion of me, not havin' ideas at the moment. And so the boys resumed their cyards. "I'd most forgot about it. But Trampas's mem'ry is one of his strong points.
"Some folks 'as the curiousest ways o' wantin' theirselves remembered arter they're gone" he went on "An' others seems as if they don't care for no mem'ry at all 'cept in the 'arts o' their friends. Now there was Tom o' the Gleam, a kind o' gypsy rover in these parts, 'im as murdered a lord down at Blue Anchor this very year's July " Helmsley drew a quick breath. "I know!" he said "I was there!"
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