"Rely upon us, Bunce. You have done too much in my behalf to permit any of our family to forget your services. We shall do all that we can toward giving you a fair start in the stream, and it will not be often that you shall require a helping-hand in paddling your canoe."
"I know'd it, Master Colleton. 'Tain't in Carolina, nor in Georgy, nor Virginny, no—nor down in Alabam, that a man will look long for provisions, and see none come. That's the people for me. I guess I must ha' been born by nature in the South, though I did see daylight in Connecticut."
"No blarney, Bunce. We know you—what you are and what you are not!—good and bad in fair proportions. But what paper is that in your hand?"
"Oh, that? That's jest what I was going now to ax you about. That's my bill of particulars, you see, that I'm going to send on by the post, to Ichabod Bunce. He'll trade with me, now we're off partnership, and be as civil as a lawyer jest afore court-time. 'Cause, you see, he'll be trying to come over me, and will throw as much dust in my eyes as he can. But I guess he don't catch me with mouth ajar. I know his tricks, and he'll find me up to them."
"And what is it you require of me in this matter?"
"Oh, nothing, but jest to look over this list, and tell me how you 'spose the things will suit your part of the country. You see I must try and larn how to please my customers, that is to be. Now, you see, here's, in the first place—for they're a great article now in the country, and turn out well in the way of sale—here's—"
But we need not report the catalogue. Enough, that he proceeded to unfold (dwelling with an emphatic and precise description of each article in turn) the immense inventory of wares and merchandises with which he was about to establish. The assortment was various enough. There were pen-knives, and jack-knives, and clasp-knives, and dirk-knives, horn and wooden combs, calicoes and clocks, and tin-ware and garden seeds; everything, indeed, without regard to fitness of association, which it was possible to sell in the region to which he was going.
Ralph heard him through his list with tolerable patience; but when the pedler, having given it a first reading, proposed a second, with passing comments on the prospects of sale of each separate article, by way of recapitulation, the youth could stand it no longer. Apologizing to the tradesman, therefore in good set terms, he hurried away to the completion of those preparations called for by his approaching departure. Bunce, having no auditor, was compelled to do the same; accordingly a few hours after, the entire party made its appearance in the court of the village-inn, where the carriages stood in waiting.
About this time another party left the village, though in a different direction. It consisted of old Allen, his wife, and daughter Kate. In their company rode the lawyer Pippin, who, hopeless of elevation in his present whereabouts, was solicitous of a fairer field for the exhibition of his powers of law and logic than that which he now left had ever afforded him. He made but a small item in the caravan. His goods and chattels required little compression for the purposes of carriage, and a small Jersey—a light wagon in free use in that section, contained all his wardrobe, books, papers, &c.—the heirlooms of a long and carefully economized practice. We may not follow his fortunes after his removal to the valley of the Mississippi. It does not belong to the narrative; but, we may surely say to those in whom his appearance may have provoked some interest, that subsequently he got into fine practice—was notorious for his stump-speeches; and a random sheet of the "Republican Star and Banner of Independence" which we now have before us, published in the town of "Modern Ilium," under the head of the "Triumph of Liberty and Principle," records, in the most glowing language, the elevation of Peter Pippin, Esq., to the state legislature, by seven votes majority over Colonel Hannibal Hopkins, the military candidate—Pippin 39, Hopkins 32. Such a fortunate result, if we have rightly estimated the character of the man, will have easily salved over all the hurts which, in his earlier history, his self-love may have suffered.
But the hour of departure was at hand, and assisting the fair Edith into the carriage, Ralph had the satisfaction of placing her beside the sweetly sad, the lovely, but still deeply suffering girl, to whom he owed so much in the preservation of his life. She was silent when he spoke, but she looked her replies, and he felt that they were sufficiently expressive. The aunt had been easily persuaded to go with her niece, and we find her seated accordingly along with Colonel Colleton in the same carriage with the young ladies. Ralph rode, as his humor prompted, sometimes on horseback, and sometimes in a light gig—a practice adopted with little difficulty, where a sufficient number of servants enabled him to transfer the trust of one or the other conveyance to the liveried outriders. Then came the compact, boxy, buggy, buttoned-up vehicle of our friend the pedler—a thing for which the unfertile character of our language, as yet, has failed to provide a fitting name—but which the backwoodsman of the west calls a go-cart; a title which the proprietor does not always esteem significant of its manifold virtues and accommodations. With a capacious stomach, it is wisely estimated for all possible purposes; and when opened with a mysterious but highly becoming solemnity, before the gaping and wondering woodsman, how "awful fine" do the contents appear to Miss Nancy and the little whiteheads about her. How grand are its treasures, of tape and toys, cottons and calicoes, yarn and buttons, spotted silks and hose—knives and thimbles—scissors and needles—wooden clocks, and coffee-mills, &c.—not to specify a closely-packed and various assortment of tin-ware and japan, from the tea-kettle and coffee-pot to the drinking mug for the pet boy and the shotted rattle for the infant. A judicious distribution of the two latter, in the way of presents to the young, and the worthy pedler drives a fine bargain with the parents in more costly commodities.