Then came one of the most impressive moments that I shall have to chronicle in these memoirs; for, as soon as I had finished speaking, my friend slapped me vigorously on the back, making at the same time, with excited shrillness, this observation, “Hey!”--which, being a common juvenile exclamation, had, of course, no jocose allusion to the principal subject of my discourse.
“Hey! bully for you!” continued my enthusiastic friend and school-fellow, as soon as he could get his breath, which the suddenness of his lucky thought had evidently taken away. “Hey! that’s just what _I_’d do. I’d go out into the world, and seek my fortune, like the boys in the story-books; and,” said he, suddenly changing his tone and manner to those of the most excessive gravity and deliberation,--“and, that you needn’t be without means to help you along, take these!”
Whereupon he drew forth from his capacious trousers pocket, and placed in my hand, five large copper cents, which at first had the appearance of so many oysters fried in batter, so girt about and covered were they with fragments of bread-and-butter, deposited, I suppose, in the course of my friend’s entire catering.
It was, indeed, as he assured me, his whole cash capital; but he would not hear to my scruples at taking it. More earnest or impressive about it, or, under the circumstances, more self-denying and truly generous, he could not have been if he had been giving the world away.
So, that morning, we parted,--he wending his way, by no means _con amore_, to school; and I, with a queer, uncertain feeling in the region of my small waistcoat, going forth, my five coppers in my pocket, to seek my fortune.
Deserting entirely the haunts of my play-fellows, I stole down to the wharves. Here the sight of the crowded shipping brought back, more strongly than ever, the memory of that exhilarating trip on the old Indiana, with her sublime brass-band and warlike sheet-iron Indian; and I tried to “hire out” on a steamboat.
The people to whom I made application eyed me suspiciously, for I was very small of my age. They also asked me a great many disagreeable questions, and generally ended by advising me to go home to my friends, if I had any. My size was manifestly against me. Vainly I assured them I was eleven years old, and my own master. They shook their heads, and told me brusquely to “go ashore.”