Page:Life of Colonel Jack (1810).djvu/27

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COLONEL JACK.
11

never go at all, or if he went, never come back with an answer; which was such a regardless, disobliging way, that no body had a good word for him, and every body said he had the very look of a rogue, and would come to be hanged. In a word, he got nothing of any body for good will, but was as it were obliged to turn thief, for the mere necessity of bread to eat; for if he begged, he did it with so ill a tone, rather like bidding folks give him victuals than entreating them; that one man, of whom he had something given, and knew him, told him one day, Captain Jack, says he, thou art but an awkward, ugly sort of a beggar, now thou art a boy; I doubt thou wilt be fitter to ask a man for his purse, than for a penny, when thou comest to be a man.

The major was a merry thoughtless fellow, always cheerful: Whether he had any victuals or no, he never complained; and he recommended himself so well by his good carriage, that the neighbours loved him, and he got victuals enough one where or other. Thus we all made shift, though we were so little, to keep from starving; and as for lodging, we lay in the summer-time about the watch-houses, and on bulk-heads, and shop-doors, where we were known; as for a bed, we knew nothing what belonged to it for many years after my nurse died; and in winter we got into the ash-