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Updated: May 14, 2025
'We'll pull out tomorrow, if we camp within five miles just to get everything in running order and remember if we've forgotten anything. The sleds groaned by on their steel-shod runners, and the dogs strained low in the harnesses in which they were born to die. Jacques Baptiste paused by the side of Sloper to get a last glimpse of the cabin.
Sloper was a widower; how many years he had lived with his wife I can't say. She died one Easter Monday, and when Sloper took possession of his new house near Erith he mounted some small cannon on his lawn, and these pieces of artillery he regularly fired every Easter Monday in celebration of what he called the joyfullest anniversary of his life.
In the Merrimac valley the devil found converts for many years after: Goody Mose, of Rocks village, who tumbled down-stairs when a big beetle was killed at an evening party, some miles away, after it had been bumping into the faces of the company; Goody Whitcher, of Ameshury, whose loom kept banging day and night after she was dead; Goody Sloper, of West Newbury, who went home lame directly that a man had struck his axe into the beam of a house that she had bewitched, but who recovered her strength and established an improved reputation when, in 1794, she swam out to a capsized boat and rescued two of the people who were in peril; Goodman Nichols, of Rocks village, who "spelled" a neighbor's son, compelling him to run up one end of the house, along the ridge, and down the other end, "troubling the family extremely by his strange proceedings;" Susie Martin, also of Rocks, who was hanged in spite of her devotions in jail, though the rope danced so that it could not be tied, but a crow overhead called for a withe and the law was executed with that; and Goody Morse, of Market and High Streets, Newburyport, whose baskets and pots danced through her house continually and who was seen "flying about the sun as if she had been cut in twain, or as if the devil did hide the lower part of her."
It is absolutely true: I pledge my word for that on the authority of the records of the Whitechapel County Court. In the year 1851 there dwelt on the banks of the river Thames a retired tailor, whom I will call John Sloper, out of regard to the feelings of his posterity, if such there be. This man had for many years carried on a flourishing trade in the east end of London.
Here is my first school-book, with a name written on the cover by dear old "Marm Sloper," setting forth that the owner thereof is "aged 5." As I went musing along in Westmoreland that rainy morning, so many years ago, little figures seemed to accompany me, and childish voices filled the air as I trudged through the wet grass.
Sloper had divided into seven unequal parts, which he left, as endowments, to as many different hospitals and schools of medicine, in various cities of the Union. To Mrs. Penniman it seemed monstrous that a man should play such tricks with other people's money; for after his death, of course, as she said, it was other people's.
"I thought," he gasped, "it was old Ally Sloper." I managed to escape from him and to stand up. Hubert, however, did not say anything, but began to brush my coat with his hand. "Who is Ally Sloper?" I asked, for I began to think that the Professor, who was looking ashamed of himself, was a lunatic. "He's Mr. King, the man who helps me at Oxford, he dresses rather funnily," Hubert explained.
Among the civilians there was a man named Sloper, who had for some time past been carefully fished for by an enthusiastic young red-coat whom he had basely misled and swindled. He had been at last hooked by the young red-coat, played, and finally landed in the hall, with his captor beside him to keep him there for Sloper was a slippery fish, with much of the eel in his nature.
'We can't be more'n four hundred miles from the Yukon, concluded Sloper, multiplying his thumb nails by the scale of the map. The council, in which the two Incapables had whined to excellent disadvantage, was drawing to a close. 'Hudson Bay Post, long time ago.
He sat alone, and was obviously in a very sulky frame of mind a condition which he occasionally indicated through a growl of dissatisfaction. As Miles sat wondering what could have upset the temper of a tar whose visage was marked by the unmistakable lines and dimples of good-humour, he overheard part of the conversation that passed between the barman and Mr Sloper.
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