Next is a cash match. Well, that’s a cheat. It begins in dissimulation, and ends in detection and punishment. I don’t pity the parties; it serves them right. They meet without pleasure, and part without pain. The first time I went to Nova Scotia to vend clocks, I fell in with a German officer, who married a woman with a large fortune; she had as much as three hundred pounds. He could never speak of it without getting up, walking round the room, rubbing his hands, and smacking his lips. The greatest man he ever saw, his own prince, had only five hundred a-year, and his daughters had to select and buy the chickens, wipe the glasses, starch their own muslins, and see the fine soap made. One half of them were Protestants, and the other half Catholics, so as to bait the hooks for royal fish of either creed. They were poor and proud, but he hadn’t a morsel of pride in him, for he had condescended to marry the daughter of a staff surgeon; and she warn’t poor, for she had three hundred pounds. He couldn’t think of nothin’ but his fortune. He spent the most of his time in building castles, not in Germany, but in the air, for they cost nothing. He used to delight to go marooning1 for a day or two in Maitland settlement, where old soldiers are located, and measured every man he met by the gauge of his purse. “Dat poor teevil,” he would say, “is wort twenty pounds, well, I am good for tree hundred, in gold and silver, and provinch notes, and de mortgage on Burkit Crowse’s farm for twenty-five pounds ten shillings and eleven pence halfpenny—fifteen times as much as he is, pesides ten pounds interest.” If he rode a horse, he calculated now many he could purchase; and he found they would make an everlastin’ cahoot.2 If he sailed in a boat, he counted the flotilla he could buy; and at last he used to think, “Vell now, if my vrow would go to de depot (graveyard) vat is near to de church, Goten Himmel, mid my fortune I could marry any pody I liked, who had shtock of cattle, shtock of clothes, and shtock in de Bank, pesides farms and foresht lands, and dyke lands, and meadow lands, and vind-mill and vater-mill; but dere is no chanse she shall die, for I was dirty (thirty) when I married her, and she was dirty-too (thirty-two). Tree hundred pounds! Vell, it’s a great shum; but vat shall I do mid it? If I leave him mid a lawyer, he say, Mr Von Sheik, you gub it to me. If I put him into de pank, den de ting shall break, and my forten go smash, squash—vot dey call von shilling in de pound. If I lock him up, den soldier steal and desert away, and conetry people shall hide him, and I will not find him no more. I shall mortgage it on a farm. I feel vary goot, vary pig, and vary rich. If I would not lose my bay and commission, I would kick de colonel, kiss his vife, and put my cane thro’ his vinder. I don’t care von damn for nopoty no more.”
1 Marooning differs from pic-nicing in this—the former continues several days, the other lasts but one.
2 Cahoot is one of the new coinage, and in Mexico, means a band or cavalcade.
Well, his wife soon after that took a day and died; and he followed her to the grave. It was the first time he ever gave her precedence, for he was a disciplinarian; he knew the difference of “rank and file,” and liked to give the word of command, “Rear rank, take open order—march!” Well, I condoled with him about his loss. Sais he: “Mr Shlick, I did’nt lose much by her: the soldier carry her per order, de pand play for noting, and de crape on de arm came from her ponnet.”
“But the loss of your wife?” said I.
Well, that excited him, and he began to talk Hessian. “Jubes renovare dolorem,” said he.
“I don’t understand High Dutch,” sais I, “when it’s spoke so almighty fast.”
“It’s a ted language,” said he.
I was a goin’ to tell him I didn’t know the dead had any language, but I bit in my breath.
“Mr Shlick,” said he, “de vife is gone” (and clapping his waistcoat pocket with his hand, and grinning like a chissy cat), he added, “but de monish remain.”