“Oh, what—­my trade?  Why, to say the truth, I never was brought up to any trade in particular, but I am a pretty slick hand, now, I tell you, at all of them.  I’ve been in my time a little of a farmer, a little of a merchant, a little of a sailor, and, somehow or other, a little of everything, and all sort of things.  My father was jest like myself, and swore, before I was born, that I should be born jest like him—­and so I was.  Never were two black peas more alike.  He was a ’cute old fellow, and swore he’d make me so too—­and so he did.  You know how he did that?—­now, I’ll go a York shilling against a Louisiana bit, that you can’t tell to save you.”

“Why, no, I can’t—­let’s hear,” was the response of the wagoner, somewhat astounded by the volubility of his new acquaintance.

“Well, then, I’ll tell you.  He sent me away, to make my fortin, and git my edication, ’mongst them who was ’cute themselves, and maybe that an’t the best school for larning a simple boy ever went to.  It was sharp edge agin sharp edge.  It was the very making of me, so far as I was made.”

“Well, now, that is a smart way, I should reckon, to get one’s edication.  And in this way I suppose you larned how to chop with your little poleaxe.  Dogs! but you’ve made me as smart a looking axle as I ever tacked to my team.”

“I tell you, friend, there’s nothing like sich an edication.  It does everything for a man, and he larns to make everything out of nothing.  I could make my bread where these same Indians wouldn’t find the skin of a hoe-cake; and in these woods, or in the middle of the sea, t’ant anything for me to say I can always fish up some notion that will sell in the market.”

“Well, now, that’s wonderful, strannger, and I should like to see how you would do it.”

“You can’t do nothing, no how, friend, unless you begin at the beginning.  You’ll have to begin when you’re jest a mere boy, and set about getting your edication as I got mine.  There’s no two ways about it.  It won’t come to you; you must go to it.  When you’re put out into the wide world, and have no company and no acquaintance, why, what are you to do?  Suppose, now, when your wagon mired down, I had not come to your help, and cut out your wood, and put in the spoke, wouldn’t you have had to do it yourself?”

“Yes—­to be sure; but then I couldn’t have done it in a day.  I an’t handy at these things.”

“Well, that was jest the way with me when I was a boy.  I had nobody to help me out of the mud—­nobody to splice my spokes, or assist me any how, and so I larned to do it myself.  And now, would you think it, I’m sometimes glad of a little turn-over, or an accident, jest that I may keep my hand in and not forget to be able to help myself or my neighbors.”

“Well, you’re a cur’ous person, and I’d like to hear something more about you.  But it’s high time we should wet our whistles, and it’s but dry talking without something to wash a clear way for the slack.  So, boys, be up, and fish up the jemmi-john—­I hope it hain’t been thumped to bits in the rut.  If it has, I shall be in a tearing passion.”