the guns
and fired them like madmen after the blue jackets had had more than
enough. Oh, dear me, no! My lord gets into the valorous British army,
where cowardice--oh, dear me!--is a thing almost entirely unknown; and
being on the field of Waterloo the day before the battle, falls off his
horse, and, pretending to be hurt in the back, gets himself put on the
sick list--a pretty excuse--hurting his back--for not being present at
such a fight. Old Benbow, after part of both his legs had been shot away
in a sea-fight, made the carpenter make him a cradle to hold his bloody
stumps, and continued on deck cheering his men till he died. Jack
returns home, and gets into trouble, and having nothing to subsist by but
his wits, gets his living by the ring, and the turf, and gambling, doing
many an odd kind of thing, I dare say, but not half those laid to his
charge. My lord does much the same without the excuse for doing so which
Jack had, for he had plenty of means, is a leg, and a black, only in a
more polished way, and with more cunning, and I may say success, having
done many a rascally thing never laid to his charge. Jack at last cuts
the throat of a villain who had cheated him of all he had in the world,
and who, I am told, was in many points the counterpart of this screw and
white feather, is taken up, tried, and executed; and certainly taking
away a man's life is a dreadful thing; but is there nothing as bad?
Whitefeather will cut no person's throat--I will not say who has cheated
him, for, being a cheat himself, he will take good care that nobody
cheats him, but he'll do something quite as bad; out of envy to a person
who never injured him, and whom he hates for being more clever and
respected than himself, he will do all he possibly can, by backbiting and
every unfair means, to do that person a mortal injury. But Jack is
hanged, and my lord is not. Is that right? My wife, Mary Fulcher--I beg
her pardon, Mary Dale--who is a Methodist, and has heard the mighty
preacher, Peter Williams, says some people are preserved from hanging by
the grace of God. With her I differs, and says it is from want of
courage. This Whitefeather, with one particle of Jack's courage, and
with one tithe of his good qualities, would have been hanged long ago,
for he has ten times Jack's malignity. Jack was hanged because, along
with his bad qualities, he had courage and generosity; this fellow is
not, because with all Jack's bad qualities