“No, no,” replied he; “in the house I hear very well, but in the open air I can’t hear at all, if a person speaks to me two yards off. Always speak to me close to my ear in the open air, but not loud, and then I shall hear you very well.” I caught a bright glance from Mary’s blue eye, and made no answer. “This frost will hold, I’m afraid,” continued Stapleton, “and we shall have nothing to do for some days but to blow our fingers and spend our ; but there’s never much doing at this time of the year. The winter cuts us watermen up terribly. As for me, I smokes my pipe and thinks on human natur’; but what you are to do Jacob, I can’t tell.”
“Oh, he will teach me to read and write,” replied Mary.
“I don’t know that he shall,” replied Stapleton. “What’s the use of reading and writing to you? We’ve too many senses already, in my opinion, and if so be we have learning to boot, why then all the worse for us.”
“How many senses are there, father?”
“How many! I’m sure I can’t tell, but more than enough to puzzle us.”
“There are only five, I believe,” said I; “first, there’s hearing.”
“Well,” replied Stapleton “hearing may be useful at times; but not hearing at times is much more convenient. I make twice as much money since I lost the better part of my hearing.”
“Well, then, there’s seeing,” continued I.
“Seeing is useful at times, I acknowledge; but I knows this, that if a man could pull a young couple about the river, and not be able to see now and then, it would be many a half-crown in his pocket.”
“Well, then, now we come to tasting.”
“No use at all—only a vexation. If there was no tasting we should not care whether we ate brown bread or roast beef, drank water or XX ale; and in these hard times that would be no small saving.”
“Well, then, let me see, there’s smelling.”
“Smelling’s no use whatever. For one good smell by the river’s side there be ten nasty ones; and there is everywhere, to my conviction.”
“Which is the next, Jacob?” said Mary, smiling archly.
“Feeling.”
“Feeling! that’s the worst of the whole. Always feel too cold in winter, too hot in summer—feel a blow too; feeling only gives pain; that’s a very bad sense.”
“Well, then, I suppose you think we should get on better without our senses.”
“No, not without all of them. A little hearing and a little seeing be all very well; but there are other senses which you have forgot, Jacob. Now, one I takes to be the very best of the bunch is smoking.”
“I never heard that was a sense,” replied I, laughing.
“Then you haven’t half finished your education, Jacob.”
“Are reading and writing senses, father?” inquired Mary.
“To be sure they be, girl; for without sense you can’t read and write; and rowing be a sense just as well; and there be many other senses; but, in my opinion, most of the senses be nonsense, and only lead to .”
“Jacob,” said Mary, whispering to my ear, “isn’t loving a sense?”
“No, that’s nonsense,” replied I.
“Well, then,” replied she, “I agree with my father that nonsense is better than sense; but still I don’t see why I should not learn to read and write, father.”
“I’ve lived all my life without it, and never felt the want of it—why can’t you?”
“Because I do feel the want of it.”
“So you may, but they leads no no good. Look at those fellows at the Feathers; all were happy enough before Jim , who is a scholar, came among them, and now since he reads to them they do nothing but , and , and talk about I don’t know what—corn laws, and taxes, and liberty, and all other nonsense. Now, what could you do more than you do now, if you larnt to read and write?”
“I could amuse myself when I’ve nothing to do, father, when you and Jacob are away. I often sit down, after I’ve done all my work, and think what I shall do next, and at last I look out of the window and make faces at people, because I’ve nothing better to do. Now, father, you must let him learn me to read and write.”
“Well, Mary, if you will, you will; but , don’t blame me for it—it must be all on your own head, and not on my conscience. I’ve lived some forty or fifty years in this world, and all my bad luck has been owing to having too much senses, and all my good luck to getting rid of them.”
“I wish you would tell me how that came to pass,” said I; “I should like to hear it very much, and it will be a lesson to Mary.”
“Well, I don’t care if I do, Jacob, only I must light my pipe first; and, Mary, do you go for a pot o’ beer.”
“Let Jacob go, father. I mean him to run on all my errands now.”
“You mustn’t order Jacob, Mary.”
“No, no—I wouldn’t think of ordering him, but I know he will do it—won’t you, Jacob?”
“Yes, with pleasure,” replied I.
“Well, with all my heart, provided it be all for love,” said Stapleton.
“Of course, all for love,” replied Mary, looking at me, “or Latin—which, Jacob?”
“What’s Latin?” said her father.
“Oh! that’s a new sense Jacob has been showing me something of, which, like many others, proved to be nonsense.”
I went for the beer, and when I returned found the fire burning brightly, and a strong sense of smoking from old Stapleton’s pipe. He once or twice more, and then commenced his history as follows:
“I can’t exactly say when I were born, nor where,” said old Stapleton, taking his pipe out of his mouth, “because I never axed either father or mother, and they never told me, because why, I never did ax, and that be all agreeable to human natur’.” Here Stapleton paused, and took three whiffs of his pipe. “I when I was a little about two foot nothing, mother used to me all day long, and I used to cry in proportion. Father used to cry shame, and then mother would fly at him; he would whack she; she would up with her in one corner and cry, while I did the same with my pinbefore in another; all that was nothing but human natur’.” (A pause, and six or seven whiffs of the pipe.)
“I was sent to school at a penny a week, to keep me out of the way, and out of mischief. I larnt nothing but to sit still on the form and hold my tongue, and so I used to amuse myself twiddling my thumbs, and looking at the flies as they buzzed about the room in the summer time; and in the winter, cause there was no flies of no sort, I used to watch the old missus a-knitting of stockings, and think how soon the time would come when I should go home and have my supper, which, in a child was nothing but human natur’.” (, puff, puff.) “Father and mother lived in a cellar; mother sold coals and ’tatoes, and father used to go out to work in the
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