“My old master, Twiddledum Don,
Went to bed with his trousers on,
One shoe off, and the other shoe on—
That’s the description of Twiddledum Don.”
“Oh, my old ‘Come-outer,’” said I, as I took my last look at him for the night, “you have ‘come-out’ in your true colours at last, but this comes of ‘fiddling and dancing, and serving the devil.’”
[CHAPTER VIII.]
STITCHING A BUTTON-HOLE.
After the family had retired to rest, the doctor and I lighted our cigars, and discoursed of the events of the evening.
“Such men as Jehu Judd,” he said, “do a monstrous deal of mischief in the country. By making the profession of piety a cloak for their knavery, they injure the cause of morality, and predispose men to ridicule the very appearance of that which is so justly entitled to their respect, a sober, righteous, and godly life. Men lose their abhorrence of fraud in their distrust of the efficacy of religion. It is a duty we owe to society to expose and punish such fellows.”
“Well then, I will do my duty,” said I, laughing, “he has fired into the wrong flock this time, I’ll teach him not to do it again, or my name is not Sam Slick. I will make that goney a caution to sinners, I know. He has often deceived others so that they didn’t know him, I will now alter him so he shan’t know himself when he wakes up.”
Proceeding to my bed-room, which, as I said before, adjoined the parlour, I brought out the box containin’ my sketchin’ fixins, and opening of a secret drawer, showed him a small paper of bronze-coloured powder.
“That,” said I,” is what the Indians at the Nor-west use to disguise a white man, when he is in their train, not to deceive their enemies, for you couldn’t take in a savage for any length of time, no how you could fix it, but that his pale face might not alarm the scouts of their foes. I was stained that way for a month when I was among them, for there was war going on at the time.”
Mixing a little of it with brandy I went to the sofa, where Mr Jehu Judd was laid out, and with a camel’s hair brush ornamented his upper lip with two enormous and ferocious moustachios, curling well upwards, across his cheeks to his ears, and laid on the paint in a manner to resist the utmost efforts of soap and water. Each eye was adorned with an enormous circle to represent the effect of blows, and on his forehead was written in this indelible ink in large print letters, like those on the starn-board of a vessel, the words “Jehu of Quaco.”
In the morning we made preparations for visiting the Bachelor Beaver. The evangelical trader awoke amid the general bustle of the house, and sought me out to talk over the sale of his mackarel.