my boarders a-listenin’ as if he wa’n’t no older than my Benj.  Franklin, and that schoolmistress settin’ jest as if she’d been bewitched, and you might stick pins into her without her hollerin’.  He was a master hand to talk when he got a-goin’.  But he never would have no disputes nor long argerments at my table, and I liked him all the better for that; for I had a boarder once that never let nothin’ go by without disputin’ of it, till nobody knowed what he believed and what he didn’t believe, only they was pretty sure he didn’t believe the side he was a-disputin’ for, and some of ’em said, that, if you wanted him to go any partickerlar way, you must do with him just as folks do that drive—­well, them obstinate creeturs that squeal so,—­ for I don’t like to name such creeturs in connexion with a gentleman that paid his board regular, and was a very smart man, and knowed a great deal, only his knowledge all laid crosswise, as one of ’em used to say, after t’other one had shet him up till his mouth wa’n’t of no more use to him than if it had been a hole in the back of his head.  This wa’n’t no sech gentleman.  One of my boarders used to say that he always said exactly what he was a mind to, and stuck his idees out jest like them that sells pears outside their shop-winders, —­some is three cents, some is two cents, and some is only one cent, and if you don’t like, you needn’t buy, but them’s the articles and them’s the prices, and if you want ’em, take ’em, and if you don’t, go about your business, and don’t stand mellerin’ of ’em with your thumbs all day till you’ve sp’ilt ’em for other folks.

He was a man that loved to stick round home as much as any cat you ever see in your life.  He used to say he’d as lief have a tooth pulled as go away anywheres.  Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he didn’t.  Pretty nigh killed himself goin’ about lecterin’ two or three winters,—­talkin’ in cold country lyceums,—­as he used to say,—­goin’ home to cold parlors and bein’ treated to cold apples and cold water, and then goin’ up into a cold bed in a cold chamber, and comin’ home next mornin’ with a cold in his head as bad as the horse-distemper.  Then he’d look kind of sorry for havin’ said it, and tell how kind some of the good women was to him,—­how one spread an edder-down comforter for him, and another fixed up somethin’ hot for him after the lecter, and another one said, —­“There now, you smoke that cigar of yours after the lecter, jest as if you was at home,”—­and if they’d all been like that, he’d have gone on lectering forever, but, as it was, he had got pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred a nateral death to puttin’ himself out of the world by such violent means as lecterin’.