A Short-tempered Person - Gravitation - The Best Endowment -Mary Fulcher - Fair Dealing - Horse-witchery - Darius and his Groom - The Jockey's Tricks - The Two Characters - The Jockey's Song.
THE jockey, having taken off his coat and advanced towards me, as I have stated in the preceding chapter, exclaimed, in an angry tone, "This is the third time you have interrupted me in my tale, Mr.Rye; I passed over the two first times with a simple warning, but you will now please to get up and give me the satisfaction of a man.""I am really sorry," said I, "if I have given you offence, but you were talking of our English habits of bestowing nicknames, and I could not refrain from giving a few examples tending to prove what a very ancient habit it is.""But you interrupted me," said the jockey, "and put me out of my tale, which you had no right to do; and as for your examples, how do you know that I wasn't going to give some as old or older than yourn? Now stand up, and I'll make an example of you.""Well," said I, "I confess it was wrong in me to interrupt you, and I ask your pardon.""That won't do," said the jockey, "asking pardon won't do.""Oh," said I, getting up, "if asking pardon does not satisfy you, you are a different man from what I considered you."But here the Hungarian, also getting up, interposed his tall form and pipe between us, saying in English, scarcely intelligible, "Let there be no dispute! As for myself, I am very much obliged to the young man of Horncastle for his interruption, though he has told me that one of his dirty townsmen called me 'Long-stocking.' By Isten! there is more learning in what he has just said than in all the verdammt English histories of Thor and Tzernebock I ever read.""I care nothing for his learning," said the jockey."Iconsider myself as good a man as he, for all his learning; so stand out of the way, Mr.Sixfooteleven, or - ""I shall do no such thing," said the Hungarian."I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself.You ask a young man to drink champagne with you, you make him dronk, he interrupt you with very good sense; he ask your pardon, yet you not - ""Well," said the jockey, "I am satisfied.I am rather a short-tempered person, but I bear no malice.He is, as you say, drinking my wine, and has perhaps taken a drop too much, not being used to such high liquor; but one doesn't like to be put out of one's tale, more especially when one was about to moralize, do you see, oneself, and to show off what little learning one has.However, I bears no malice.Here is a hand to each of you; we'll take another glass each, and think no more about it."The jockey having shaken both of our hands, and filled our glasses and his own with what champagne remained in the bottle, put on his coat, sat down, and resumed his pipe and story.
"Where was I? Oh, roaming about the country with Hopping Ned and Biting Giles.Those were happy days, and a merry and prosperous life we led.However, nothing continues under the sun in the same state in which it begins, and our firm was soon destined to undergo a change.We came to a village where there was a very high church steeple, and in a little time my comrades induced a crowd of people to go and see me display my gift by flinging stones above the heads of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who stood at the four corners on the top, carved in stone.The parson, seeing the crowd, came waddling out of his rectory to see what was going on.
After I had flung up the stones, letting them fall just where I liked - and one, I remember, fell on the head of Mark, where I dare say it remains to the present day - the parson, who was one of the description of people called philosophers, held up his hand, and asked me to let the next stone I flung up fall upon it.He wished, do you see, to know with what weight the stone would fall down, and talked something about gravitation - a word which I could never understand to the present day, save that it turned out a grave matter to me.
I, like a silly fellow myself, must needs consent, and, flinging the stone up to a vast height, contrived so that it fell into the parson's hand, which it cut dreadfully.The parson flew into a great rage, more particularly as everybody laughed at him, and, being a magistrate, ordered his clerk, who was likewise constable, to conduct me to prison as a rogue and vagabond, telling my comrades that if they did not take themselves off, he would serve them in the same manner.
