you hear 'em shooting the cannon?"
"Oh, yes. I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heah--watched um
thoo de bushes."
Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and
lighting. Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was
a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was
the same way when young birds done it. I was going to catch some of
them, but Jim wouldn't let me. He said it was death. He said his
father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his
old granny said his father would die, and he did.
And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for
dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the
tablecloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and
that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next
morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die.
Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that,
because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting
me.
I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them.
Jim knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything. I
said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I
asked him if there warn't any good-luck signs. He says:
"Mighty few--an' _dey_ ain't no use to a body. What you want to know
when good luck's a-comin' for? Want to keep it off?" And he said: "Ef
you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's a-gwyne
to be rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur
ahead. You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you
might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat
you gwyne to be rich bymeby."
"Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?"
"What's de use to ax dat question? Don't you see I has?"
"Well, are you rich?"
"No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich ag'in. Wunst I had
foteen dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out."
"What did you speculate in, Jim?"
"Well, fust I tackled stock."
"What kind of stock?"
"Why, live stock--cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I
ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. De cow up 'n' died on my
han's."
"So you lost the ten dollars."
"No, I didn't lose it all. I on'y los' 'bout nine of it. I sole de
hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents."
"You had five dollars and
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