Old Mr. Suggs groaned, as he was wont to do in the pulpit, at this display of Simon’s viciousness.
“Simon,” said he, “you’re a poor ignunt creetur. You don’t know nothin’ and you’ve never been no whars. If I was to turn you off, you’d starve in a week.”
“I wish you’d try me,” said Simon, “and jist see. I’d win more money in a week than you can make in a year. There aint nobody round here kin make seed corn off o’ me at cards. I’m rale smart,” he added, with great emphasis.
“Simon! Simon! you poor unletered fool. Don’t you know that all card-players and chicken-fighters, and horse-racers go to hell? You crack-brained creatur’ you. And don’t you know that them that play cards always lose their money, and—”
“Who wins it all then, daddy?” asked Simon.
“Shet your mouth, you imperdent, slack-jaw’d dog. Your daddy’s a-tryin’ to give you some good advice, and you a-pickin’ up his words that way. I know’d a young man once, when I lived in Ogletharp, as went down to Augusty and sold a hundred dollars’ worth of cotton for his daddy, and some o’ them gambollers got him to drinkin’, and the very first night he was with ’em they got every cent of his money.
“They couldn’t get my money in a week,” said Simon. “Anybody can git these here green fellows’ money; them’s the sort I’m a-gwine to watch for, myself. Here’s what kin fix the papers jist about as nice as anybody.”
“Well, it’s no use to argify about the matter,” said old Jedediah; “What saith the Scriptur’? ‘He that begetteth a fool, doeth it to his sorrow.’ Hence, Simon, you’re a poor, miserable fool! so, cross your hands!”
“You’d jist as well not, daddy. I tell you I’m gwine to follow playin’ cards for a livin’, and what’s the use o’ bangin’ a feller about it? I’m as smart as any of ’em, and Bob Smith says them Augusty fellers can’t make rent off o’ me.”
The Reverend Mr. Suggs had, once in his life, gone to Augusta; an extent of travel which in those days was a little unusual. His consideration among his neighbours was considerably increased by the circumstance, as he had all the benefit of the popular inference that no man could visit the city of Augusta without acquiring a vast superiority over all his untravelled neighbours, in every department of human knowledge. Mr. Suggs, then, very naturally felt ineffably indignant that an individual who had never seen a collection of human habitations larger than a log-house village—an individual, in short, no other or better than Bob Smith—should venture to express an opinion concerning the manners, customs, or anything else appertaining to, or in any wise connected with, the ultima thule of backwoods Georgians. There were two propositions which witnessed their own truth to the mind of Mr. Suggs—the one was, that a man who had never been at Augusta, could not know anything about that city, or any place or thing else; the other that one who had been there must, of necessity, be not only well informed as to all things connected with the city itself, but perfectly au fait upon all subjects whatsoever. It was therefore in a tone of mingled indignation and contempt that he replied to the last remark of Simon.