“Come by it!” he exclaimed; “ye could come by twice the sum, av ye liked. Sure, didn’t I find that they wos chargin’ tshoo dollars—aiqual to eight shillin’s, I’m towld—for carryin’ a box or portmanter the length o’ me fut; so I turns porter all at wance, an’ faix I made six dollars in less nor an hour. But as I was comin’ back, I says to myself, says I, ‘Larry, ye’ll be the better of a small glass o’ somethin’—eh!’ So in I goes to a grog-shop, and faix I had to pay half-a-dollar for a thimbleful o’ brandy, bad luck to them, as would turn the stomik o’ a pig. I almost had a round wi’ the landlord; but they towld me it wos the same iverywhere. So I wint and had another in the nixt shop I sees, jist to try; and it was thrue. Then a Yankee spies my knife,—the great pig-sticker that Bob Short swopped wi’ me for my junk o’ plum-duff off the Cape. It seems they’ve run out o’ sich articles just at this time, and would give handfuls o’ goold for wan. So says I, ‘Wot’ll ye give?’
“‘Three dollars, I guess,’ says wan.
“‘Four,’ says another; ‘he’s chaitin’ ye.’
“‘Four’s bid,’ says I, mountin’ on a keg o’ baccy, and howldin up the knife; ‘who says more? It’s the rale steel, straight from Manchester or Connaught, I misremimber which. Warranted to cut both ways, av ye only turn the idge round, and shove with a will.’
“I begood in joke; but faix they took me up in arnest, an’ run up the price to twinty dollars—four pounds, as sure as me name’s Larry—before I know’d where I wos. I belave I could ha’ got forty for it, but I hadn’t the heart to ax more, for it wasn’t worth a brass button.”
“You’ve made a most successful beginning, Larry. Have you any more knives like that one?”
“Sorrow a wan—more’s the pity. But that’s only a small bit o’ me speckilations. I found six owld newspapers in the bottom o’ me chist, and, would ye belave it, I sowld ’em, ivery wan, for half-a-dollar the pace; and I don’t rightly know how much clear goold I’ve got by standin’ all mornin’ at the post-office.”
“Standing at the post-office! What do you mean?”
“Nother more or less nor what I say. I suppose ye know the mail’s comed in yisterday morning; so says I to myself this mornin’, ‘Ye’ve got no livin’ sowl in the owld country that’s likely to write to ye, but ye better go, for all that, an’ ax if there’s letters. Maybe there is; who knows?’ So away I wint, and sure enough I found a row o’ men waitin’ for their letters; so I crushes for’ard—och! but I thought they’d ha’ hung me on the spot,—and I found it was a rule that ‘first come first sarved—fair play and no favour.’ They wos all standin’ wan behind another in a line half-a-mile long av it wos a fut, as patient as could be; some readin’ the noosepapers, and some drinkin’ coffee and tay and grog, that wos sowld by men as went up an’ down the line the whole mornin’. So away I goes to the end o’ the line, an’ took my place, detarmined to stand it out; and, in three minutes, I had a tail of a dozen men behind me. ‘Faix, Larry,’ says I, ‘it’s the first time ye iver comminced at the end of a thing in order to git to the beginnin’.’
“Well, when I wos gittin’ pretty near the post-office windy, I hears the chap behind me a-sayin’ to the fellow behind him that he expected no letters, but only took up his place in the line to sell it to them what did. An’ sure enough I found that lots o’ them were there on the same errand. Just then up comes a miner, in big boots and a wide-awake.