I don't like to name such creeturs in connexion with a gentleman
that paid his board regular, and was a very smart man, and knowed a
great deal, only his knowledge all laid crosswise, as one of 'em
used to say, after t'other one had shet him up till his mouth wa'n't
of no more use to him than if it had been a hole in the back of his
head. This wa'n't no sech gentleman. One of my boarders used to say
that he always said exactly what he was a mind to, and stuck his
idees out jest like them that sells pears outside their shop-winders,
--some is three cents, some is two cents, and some is only one cent,
and if you don't like, you needn't buy, but them's the articles and
them's the prices, and if you want 'em, take 'em, and if you don't,
go about your business, and don't stand mellerin' of 'em with your
thumbs all day till you've sp'ilt 'em for other folks.

He was a man that loved to stick round home as much as any cat you
ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth
pulled as go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went
away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin'
about lecterin' two or three winters,--talkin' in cold country
lyceums,--as he used to say,--goin' home to cold parlors and bein'
treated to cold apples and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold
bed in a cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with a cold in
his head as bad as the horse-distemper. Then he'd look kind of sorry
for havin' said it, and tell how kind some of the good women was to
him,--how one spread an edder-down comforter for him, and another
fixed up somethin' hot for him after the lecter, and another one said,
--"There now, you smoke that cigar of yours after the lecter, jest
as if you was at home,"--and if they'd all been like that, he'd have
gone on lectering forever, but, as it was, he had got pooty nigh
enough of it, and preferred a nateral death to puttin' himself out
of the world by such violent means as lecterin'.

He used to say that he was always good company enough, if he wasn't
froze to death, and if he wasn't pinned in a corner so't he couldn't
clear out when he'd got as much as he wanted. But he was a dreadful
uneven creetur in his talk, and I've heerd a smart young man that's
one of my boarders say, he believed he had a lid to the top of his
head, and took his brains out and left 'em up-stairs sometimes when
he come down in the mornin'.--About his ways, he was spry and