Here he giv' himself the most tremendious one of all, and dropped.
I thought he was gone. His Ed was so heavy, and he knocked it so hard, and he fell so stony, and the sassagereal disturbance in him must have been so immense, that I thought he was gone. But he soon come round with care, and he sat up on the floor, and he said to me, with wisdom comin' out of his eyes, if ever it come:
"Magsman! The most material difference between the two states of existence through which your un'appy friend has passed"—he reached out his poor little hand, and his tears dropped down on the mustache which it was a credit to him to have done his best to grow, but it is not in mortals to command success—"the difference is this: When I was out of society, I was paid light for being seen. When I went into society, I paid heavy for being seen. I prefer the former, even if I wasn't forced upon it. Give me out through the trumpet, in the hold way, to-morrow."
After that, he slid into the line again as easy as if he had been iled all over. But the organ was kep' from him, and no allusions was ever made, when a company was in, to his property. He got wiser every day; his views of society and the public was luminous, bewilderin', awful; and his Ed got bigger and bigger as his wisdom expanded it.
He took well, and pulled 'em in most excellent for nine weeks. At the expiration of that period, when his Ed was a sight, he expressed one evening, the last company havin' been turned out, and the doors shut, a wish to have a little music.
"Mr. Chops," I said (I never dropped the "Mr." with him; the world might do it, but not me)—"Mr. Chops, are you sure as you are in a state of mind and body to sit upon the organ?"
His answer was this:
"Toby, when next met with on the tramp, I forgive her and the Indian. And I am."
It was with fear and tremblin' that I began to turn the handle; but he sat like a lamb. It will be my belief to my dying day, that I see his Ed expand as he sat; you may therefore judge how great his thoughts was. He sat out all the changes, and then he come off.
"Toby," he says with a quiet smile, "the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and then retire behind the curtain."