When I
go off to myself, I'm gwine to make my livin' by it. So what's the use
of beatin' me about it?"
Old Mr. Suggs groaned, as he was wont to do in the pulpit, at this
display of Simon's viciousness.
"Simon," said he, "you're a poor ignunt creetur. You don't know nothin',
and you've never been nowhars. If I was to turn you off, you'd starve in
a week."
"I wish you'd try me," said Simon, "and jist see. I'd win more money in
a week than you can make in a year. There ain't nobody round here kin
make seed corn off o' me at cards. I'm rale smart," he added with great
emphasis.
"Simon! Simon! you poor unlettered fool. Don't you know that all
card-players and chicken-fighters and horse-racers go to hell? You
crack-brained creetur, you! And don't you know that them that plays
cards always loses their money, and--"
"Who wins it all, then, daddy?" asked Simon.
"Shet your mouth, you imperdent, slack-jawed dog! Your daddy's a-tryin'
to give you some good advice, and you a-pickin' up his words that way. I
knowed a young man once, when I lived in Ogletharp, as went down to
Augusty and sold a hundred dollars' worth of cotton for his daddy, and
some o' them gambollers got him to drinkin', and the _very first_ night
he was with 'em they got every cent of his money."
"They couldn't get my money in a _week_," said Simon.
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