He used to say that he was always good company enough, if he wasn’t froze to death, and if he wasn’t pinned in a corner so’t he couldn’t clear out when he’d got as much as he wanted.  But he was a dreadful uneven creetur in his talk, and I’ve heerd a smart young man that’s one of my boarders say, he believed he had a lid to the top of his head, and took his brains out and left ’em up-stairs sometimes when he come down in the mornin’.—­About his ways, he was spry and quick and impatient, and, except in a good company,—­he used to say,—­where he could get away at any minute, he didn’t like to set still very long to once, but wanted to be off walkin’, or rowin’ round in one of them queer boats of his, and he was the solitariest creetur in his goin’s about (except when he could get that schoolmistress to trail round with him) that ever you see in your life.  He used to say that usin’ two eyes and two legs at once, and keepin’ one tongue a-goin’, too, was too sharp practice for him; so he had a way of dodgin’ round all sorts of odd streets, I’ve heerd say, where he wouldn’t meet people that would stick to him.

It didn’t take much to please him.  Sometimes it would be a big book he’d lug home, and sometimes it would be a mikerscope, and sometimes it would be a dreadful old-lookin’ fiddle that he’d picked up somewhere, and kept a-screechin’ on, sayin’ all the while that it was jest as smooth as a flute.  Then ag’in I’d hear him laughin’ out all alone, and I’d go up and find him readin’ some verses that he’d been makin’.  But jest as like as not I’d go in another time, and find him cryin’,—­but he’d wipe his eyes and try not to show it, —­and it was all nothin’ but some more verses he’d been a-writin’.  I’ve heerd him say that it was put down in one of them ancient books, that a man must cry, himself, if he wants to make other folks cry; but, says he, you can’t make ’em neither laugh nor cry, if you don’t try on them feelin’s yourself before you send your work to the customers.

He was a temperate man, and always encouraged temperance by drinkin’ jest what he was a mind to, and that was generally water.  You couldn’t scare him with names, though.  I remember a young minister that’s go’n’ to be, that boards at my house, askin’ once what was the safest strong drink for them that had to take somethin’ for the stomach’s sake and thine awful infirmities. Aqua fortis, says he, —­because you know that’ll eat your insides out, if you get it too strong, and so you always mind how much you take.  Next to that, says he, rum’s the safest for a wise man, and small beer for a fool.

I never mistrusted anything about him and that schoolmistress till I heerd they was keepin’ company and was go’n’ to be merried.  But I might have knowed it well enough by his smartin’ himself up the way he did, and partin’ the hair on the back of his head, and gettin’ a blue coat with brass buttons, and wearin’ them dreadful tight little French boots that used to stand outside his