"
Every boat now steered for the "Black Hawk," and the oracle stopped
talking French to practise English. "How you do, Sare? how you do your
wife?" said Lewis Le Blanc, addressing me.
"I have no wife."
"No wife, ton pee? Who turn your fish for you, den?"
"Whereat they all laugh, and all talk French again. And oracle says,
'He takes his own eggs to market, den.' He don't laugh at that, for
wits never laugh at their own jokes; but the rest snicker till they
actilly scream.
"What wind are we going to have, Lewis?"
Oracle stands up, carefully surveys the sky, and notices all the
signs, and then looks wise, and answers in a way that there can be no
mistake. "Now you see, Sare, if de wind blow off de shore, den it will
be west wind; if it blow from de sea, den it will be east wind; and if
it blow down coast," pointing to each quarter with his hand like a
weather-cock, "den it will sartain be sout; and up de coast, den you
will be sartain it will come from de nort. I never knew dat sign
fail." And he takes his pipe from his mouth, knocks some ashes out of
it, and spits in the water, as much as to say, Now I am ready to swear
to that. And well he may, for it amounts to this, that the wind will
blow from any quarter it comes from. The other three all regard him
with as much respect as if he was clerk of the weather.
"Interesting people these, Doctor," said I, "ain't they? It's the
world before the Flood.
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