t long enough to make you citizens. Where do you live?"

"Nowhere; I lifs jest asht it happens--soometimes here, ant soometimes
dere."

"Ay, ay! I understand--no legal domicile, but lead a wandering life.
Have you many of these watches for sale?"

"Yees--I haf asht many as twenty. Dey are as sheep as dirt, and go like
pig clocks."

"And what may be your price for this?"

"Dat you can haf for only eight tollars. Effery poty wilt say it is
golt, dat doesn't know petter."

"Oh! it isn't gold then--I swan!"--what this oath meant I never exactly
knew, though I suppose it to be a puritan mode of saying "I swear!" the
attempts to cheat the devil in this way being very common among their
pious descendants, though even "Smith Thompson" himself can do no man
any good in such a case of conscience--"I swan! you come plaguy near
taking even me in! Will you come down from that price any?"

"If you wilt gif me some atfice, perhaps I may. You look like a goot
shentlemans, and one dat woultn't sheat a poor Charmans; ant effery poty
wants so much to sheat de poor Charmans, dat I will take six, if you
will drow in some atfice."

"Advice? You have come to the right man for that! Walk a little this
way, where we shall be alone. What is the natur' of the matter--action
on the case, or a tort?"

"Nein, nein! it isht not law dat I wants, put atfice."

"Well, but advice leads to law, ninety-nine times in a hundred."

"Ya, ya!" answered the pedlar, laughing; "dat may be so; put it isht not
what I vants--I vants to know vere a Charman can trafel wit' his goots
in de coontry, and not in de pig towns."

"I understand you--six dollars, hey! That sounds high for such a looking
watch"--he had just before mistaken it for gold--"but I'm always the
poor man's friend, and despise aristocracy"--what Seneca hated with the
strongest hate, he ever fancied he _despised_ the most, and by
aristocracy he merely understood gentlemen and ladies, in the true
signification of the words--"why, I'm always ready to help along the
honest citizen. If you could make up your mind, now, to part with this
one watch for nawthin', I think I could tell you a part of the country
where you might sell the other nineteen in a week."

"Goot!" exclaimed my uncle, cheerfully. "Take him--he ist your broberty,
and wilcome. Only show me de town where I canst sell de nineteen
udders."

Had my uncle Ro been a true son of peddling, he would have charged a
dollar extra on ea