teeple, and going to a
heap of smooth pebbles which lay by the roadside, I took up some, and
then went into the churchyard, and placing myself just below the tower,
my right foot resting on a ledge, about two foot from the ground, I, with
my left hand--being a left-handed person do you see--flung or chucked up
a stone, which lighting on the top of the steeple, which was at least a
hundred and fifty feet high, did there remain. After repeating this feat
two or three times, I "hulled" up a stone, which went clean over the
tower, and then one, my right foot still on the ledge, which rising at
least five yards above the steeple, did fall down just at my feet.
Without knowing it, I was showing off my gift to others besides myself,
doing what, perhaps, not five men in England could do. Two men, who were
passing by, stopped and looked at my proceedings, and when I had done
flinging came into the churchyard, and, after paying me a compliment on
what they had seen me do, proposed that I should join company with them;
I asked them who they were, and they told me. The one was Hopping Ned,
and the other Biting Giles. Both had their gifts, by which they got
their livelihood; Ned could hop a hundred yards with any man in England,
and Giles could lift up with his teeth any dresser or kitchen-table in
the country, and, standing erect, hold it dangling in his jaws. There's
many a big oak table and dresser, in certain districts of England, which
bear the marks of Giles's teeth; and I make no doubt that, a hundred or
two years hence, there'll be strange stories about those marks, and that
people will point them out as a proof that there were giants in bygone
time, and that many a dentist will moralize on the decays which human
teeth have undergone.

'They wanted me to go about with them, and exhibit my gift occasionally,
as they did theirs, promising that the money that was got by the
exhibitions should be honestly divided. I consented, and we set off
together, and that evening coming to a village, and putting up at the
ale-house, all the grand folks of the village being there smoking their
pipes, we contrived to introduce the subject of hopping--the upshot being
that Ned hopped against the schoolmaster for a pound, and beat him
hollow; shortly after, Giles, for a wager, took up the kitchen table in
his jaws, though he had to pay a shilling to the landlady for the marks
he left, whose grandchildren will perhaps get money by exhibitin