Galloping Dick
between a desire to prove me damned and the whim of recounting famous exploits on the road. But when he was sober he wore a solemn face, and roared Hell at me, as he had been in the pulpit. There was never a man so deeply damned as me, according to him, with his firstlies, and his lastlies, and his flow of quotation from the Scriptures. And verily I believe the cully was in earnest, for there were two parts of him, so to speak: one crapulous and roystering, and t’other imposed by traditions and long usage upon his fleshly habit. But there were times, too, when he was neither drunk nor pious, at which he would talk shrewdly of the affairs of State and the conditions of the Government. Not that I cared a groat for them, but it was to my profit to encourage him into a lively friendship for me, which is ever best achieved by the fortuitous discussions that pass between man and man. And then, again, he would sometimes fall very low-spirited and comment upon his own affairs with the utmost frankness.
“I should ha’ been a Dean, not to say a
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