the lot, and I'll drop two thousand pound in the streets
of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can. Not enough? Now
look here. This is the very furthest that I'm a going to. I'll make it
two thousand five hundred. And still you won't? Here, missis! Put the
horse--no, stop half a moment, I shouldn't like to turn my back upon you
neither for a trifle, I'll make it two thousand seven hundred and fifty
pound. There! Take the lot on your own terms, and I'll count out two
thousand seven hundred and fifty pound on the footboard of the cart, to
be dropped in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up
that can. What do you say? Come now! You won't do better, and you may
do worse. You take it? Hooray! Sold again, and got the seat!"

These Dear Jacks soap the people shameful, but we Cheap Jacks don't. We
tell 'em the truth about themselves to their faces, and scorn to court
'em. As to wenturesomeness in the way of puffing up the lots, the Dear
Jacks beat us hollow. It is considered in the Cheap Jack calling, that
better patter can be made out of a gun than any article we put up from
the cart, except a pair of spectacles. I often hold forth about a gun
for a quarter of an hour, and feel as if I need never leave off. But
when I tell 'em what the gun can do, and what the gun has brought down, I
never go half so far as the Dear Jacks do when they make speeches in
praise of _their_ guns--their great guns that set 'em on to do it.
Besides, I'm in business for myself: I ain't sent down into the market-
place to order, as they are. Besides, again, my guns don't know what I
say in their laudation, and their guns do, and the whole concern of 'em
have reason to be sick and ashamed all round. These are some of my
arguments for declaring that the Cheap Jack calling is treated ill in
Great Britain, and for turning warm when I think of the other Jacks in
question setting themselves up to pretend to look down upon it.

I courted my wife from the footboard of the cart. I did indeed. She was
a Suffolk young woman, and it was in Ipswich market-place right opposite
the corn-chandler's shop. I had noticed her up at a window last Saturday
that was, appreciating highly. I had took to her, and I had said to
myself, "If not already disposed of, I'll have that lot." Next Saturday
that come, I pitched the cart on the same pitch, and I was in very high
feather indeed, keeping 'em laughing the whole of the