quick
and impatient, and, except in a good company,--he used to say,--where
he could get away at any minute, he didn't like to set still very
long to once, but wanted to be off walkin', or rowin' round
in one of them queer boats of his, and he was the solitariest
creetur in his goin's about (except when he could get that
schoolmistress to trail round with him) that ever you see in your
life. He used to say that usin' two eyes and two legs at once, and
keepin' one tongue a-goin', too, was too sharp practice for him; so
he had a way of dodgin' round all sorts of odd streets, I've heerd
say, where he wouldn't meet people that would stick to him.

It didn't take much to please him. Sometimes it would be a big book
he'd lug home, and sometimes it would be a mikerscope, and sometimes
it would be a dreadful old-lookin' fiddle that he'd picked up
somewhere, and kept a-screechin' on, sayin' all the while that it
was jest as smooth as a flute. Then ag'in I'd hear him laughin' out
all alone, and I'd go up and find him readin' some verses that he'd
been makin'. But jest as like as not I'd go in another time, and
find him cryin',--but he'd wipe his eyes and try not to show it,
--and it was all nothin' but some more verses he'd been a-writin'.
I've heerd him say that it was put down in one of them ancient books,
that a man must cry, himself, if he wants to make other folks cry;
but, says he, you can't make 'em neither laugh nor cry, if you don't
try on them feelin's yourself before you send your work to the
customers.

He was a temperate man, and always encouraged temperance by drinkin'
jest what he was a mind to, and that was generally water. You
couldn't scare him with names, though. I remember a young minister
that's go'n' to be, that boards at my house, askin' once what was
the safest strong drink for them that had to take somethin' for the
stomach's sake and thine awful infirmities. _Aqua fortis_, says he,
--because you know that'll eat your insides out, if you get it too
strong, and so you always mind how much you take. Next to that, says
he, rum's the safest for a wise man, and small beer for a fool.

I never mistrusted anything about him and that schoolmistress till I
heerd they was keepin' company and was go'n' to be merried. But I
might have knowed it well enough by his smartin' himself up the way
he did, and partin' the hair on the back of his head, and gettin' a
blue coat with brass buttons, and wearin' them dreadful