"By the living hokey, the critter wasn't content with this, but he got another kink into his head that did beat all. One way or t'other, I don't know how, he got all his land and railroads and so on, worked up into pieces of paper that they call scrip; he bundled them all into his great coat pocket and come down to York again. And in less than no time he had the scrip all cut up into these red-backed bills with picters on 'em, that they offer here in York for money—then he sot up a bank on his own hook, where he keeps a making money hand over fist. He has a good chance, I tell you, for he owns all in the bank; so he's President, Cashier, and everything else, all himself, and arter all his laziness, he's worth an allfired grist of money considering how he got it."
I swanny, I couldn't hardly keep still while Captin Doolittle was a talking. I felt all over in a twitter, and my mouth would keep a sort of open with thinking so eager of what he was a saying. The minit he'd done I jumped up and hollered right out—
"Hurra," sez I, "if that aint Yankee all over. I haint the least doubt now but the critter is jest what he says he is—Slick to the back bone. Do you s'pose there is any animal on arth besides a full-blooded Connecticut Yankee that would have gone that way to get rich—all soft sodder and no work? I tell you what it is, captin, I'm raly proud tu own the critter. He's done some good in his day and generation, if he is so stuck up; for it aint in the natur of things for a feller to git rich himself without making a good many others better off. To help himself a great deal a chap must help others a little, that's my notion."
"Yes," sez the captin, "but it's an etarnal shame for these chaps tu curl up their noses at honest men."
"Jest so," says I.
With that I put on my hat, and was jest a going to cut stick—but Captin Doolittle, sez he—
"Look a here, Jonathan, if I was you, I'd make this chap pay over a little of his chink, or else I wouldn't ride about with him—I wouldn't, by gracious! He's tickled tu death tu get hold of a chap like you to brag on; for now that he's got rich, you haint no idee how anxious he is to make people think he knows something and always did. He talks about his aristocracy. The men of genius and talons make the real aristocracy in this country, and he's in hopes of getting among 'em by claiming relationship with you because you write for the papers. Supposing you ask him to lend you a couple of thousand dollars."
"No," sez I, "I'll be darned if I du. If I can't cut my own fodder I'll go hum agin."
"Wal," sez the Captin, "mebby you can git him tu help you print your letters in a book. Your par would be tickled tu death if you could print a book like that Sam writ."