No offense is meant; but if any thing in these pages should come home to
a man, let him not send it next door, but get a coop for his own
chickens. What is the use of reading or hearing for other people? We do
not eat and drink for them: why should we lend them our ears and not our
mouths? Please then, good friend, if you find a hoe on these premises,
weed your own garden with it.
I was speaking with Will Shepherd the other day about our master's old
donkey, and I said, "He is so old and stubborn, he really is not worth
his keep." "No," said Will, "and worse still, he is so vicious that I
feel sure he'll do somebody a mischief one of these days." You know they
say that walls have ears; we were talking rather loud, but we did not
know that there were ears to haystacks. We stared, I tell you, when we
saw Joe Scroggs come from behind the stack, looking as red as a
turkey-cock, and raving like mad. He burst out swearing at Will and me,
like a cat spitting at a dog. His monkey was up and no mistake. He'd let
us know that he was as good a man as either of us, or the two put
together, for the matter of that. Talk about _him_ in that way; he'd
do--I don't know what. I told old Joe we had never thought of him nor
said a word about him, and he might just as well save his breath to cool
his porridge, for nobody meant him any harm. This only made him call me
a liar and roar the louder. My friend Will was walking away, holding his
sides; but when he saw that Scroggs was still in a fume, he laughed
outright, and turned round on him and said, "Why, Joe, we were talking
about master's old donkey, and not about you; but, upon my word, I shall
never see that donkey again without thinking of Joe Scroggs.
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