I didn't mix much with other boys,
and, from living mostly with people older than myself, acquired an
old-fashioned way that I have never been able to shake off yet; all
the boys called me 'Old Slick.' In course, I didn't learn much of life
that way. All I knew about the world beyond our house and hisin, was
from books, and from hearing him talk, and he convarsed better than
any book I ever set eyes on. Well, in course I grew up unsophisticated
like, and I think I may say I was as innocent a young man as ever you
see."
Oh, how they all laughed at that! "You ever innocent!" said they.
"Come, that's good; we like that; it's capital! Sam Slick an innocent
boy! Well, that must have been before you were weaned, or talked in
joining hand, at any rate. How simple we are, ain't we?" and they
laughed themselves into a hooping-cough amost.
"Fact, Miss Janet," said I, "I assure you" (for she seemed the most
tickled at the idea of any of them) "I was, indeed. I won't go for to
pretend to say some of it didn't rub off when it became dry, when I
was fishing in the world on my own hook; but, at the time I am
speaking of, when I was twenty-one next grass, I was so guileless, I
couldn't see no harm in anything."
"So I should think," said she; "it's so like you."
"Well, at that time there was a fever, a most horrid typhus fever,
broke out in Slickville, brought there by some shipwrecked emigrants.
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