I’ll make it two thousand five hundred.  And still you won’t?  Here, missis!  Put the horse—­no, stop half a moment, I shouldn’t like to turn my back upon you neither for a trifle, I’ll make it two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound.  There!  Take the lot on your own terms, and I’ll count out two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound on the footboard of the cart, to be dropped in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can.  What do you say?  Come now!  You won’t do better, and you may do worse.  You take it?  Hooray!  Sold again, and got the seat!”

These Dear Jacks soap the people shameful, but we Cheap Jacks don’t.  We tell ’em the truth about themselves to their faces, and scorn to court ’em.  As to wenturesomeness in the way of puffing up the lots, the Dear Jacks beat us hollow.  It is considered in the Cheap Jack calling, that better patter can be made out of a gun than any article we put up from the cart, except a pair of spectacles.  I often hold forth about a gun for a quarter of an hour, and feel as if I need never leave off.  But when I tell ’em what the gun can do, and what the gun has brought down, I never go half so far as the Dear Jacks do when they make speeches in praise of their guns—­their great guns that set ’em on to do it.  Besides, I’m in business for myself:  I ain’t sent down into the market-place to order, as they are.  Besides, again, my guns don’t know what I say in their laudation, and their guns do, and the whole concern of ’em have reason to be sick and ashamed all round.  These are some of my arguments for declaring that the Cheap Jack calling is treated ill in Great Britain, and for turning warm when I think of the other Jacks in question setting themselves up to pretend to look down upon it.

I courted my wife from the footboard of the cart.  I did indeed.  She was a Suffolk young woman, and it was in Ipswich market-place right opposite the corn-chandler’s shop.  I had noticed her up at a window last Saturday that was, appreciating highly.  I had took to her, and I had said to myself, “If not already disposed of, I’ll have that lot.”  Next Saturday that come, I pitched the cart on the same pitch, and I was in very high feather indeed, keeping ’em laughing the whole of the time, and getting off the goods briskly.  At last I took out of my waistcoat-pocket a small lot wrapped in soft paper, and I put it this way (looking up at the window where she was).  “Now here, my blooming English maidens, is an article, the last article of the present evening’s sale, which I offer to only you, the lovely Suffolk Dumplings biling over with beauty, and I won’t take a bid of a thousand pounds for from any man alive.  Now what is it?  Why, I’ll tell you what it is.  It’s made of fine gold, and it’s not broke, though there’s a hole in the middle of it, and it’s stronger than any fetter that ever was forged, though it’s smaller than any finger in my set of ten.  Why ten?  Because,