Mr. Eternity by Aaron Thier Read Free Book Online

last bringing this plantation upto the stick with good employees. So great was his happyness he required volatile salts to bring him round for dinner, & in such excitement no one explained the job of book-keeper to me, and I still could not tell you what this job consists in, so therefor I did as always – nothing – and passed my days in peaceful repose.
    Who was this Dr. Dan, and where had he come from? He wore a cotton night-cap at all times, saying this protected him from the damp which exhaled from the earth. He said he was as ancient as the Americas, and as many-natured. He said he was a great explorer, and had been once to El Dorado and once to The Great Southern Land , where the earth plunged back within itself, and men walkt on their hands, and women gave birth to eyeless homunculi which they raised to infancy in a lubricious fold of skin upon their bellies. I did not believe a word of this, yet among his outrageous stories were the kernels of truth as well, & when I asked why had he come to the Indies, he spoke plausibly enough, saying he had come to cut himself a slice of the sugar boom.
    But you must take care to observe what kind of a boom it is, said he,

    for a big planter will die of the black vomit [with no help from his physician, he observed with a laugh] and leave his sons only debt, for it is a boom on credit. Nor is a man’s station any obstacle, and a razor-grinder today is a baron tomorrow, and a rat-catcher a member of Parliament. For myself I sailed down on a Bristol trader, and though bound for Jamaica we had the unhappy accident of running off-course in a storm, and foundering in the Bahama sea. I washed ashore on Nassau, where I had not been since I stopped there for water and tortoises in 1492, with the sea captain Christopheros Colombo, on our way to the court of the Great Kahn in Cathay. In Nassau I spent all my money on a suit of cloathes, namely a ruffled shirt, blue broad cloth coat with scarlet cuffs & gold buttons, nicely puff’d breaches, & a wide black hat. It was a suit Fit to be Buried in , for I thought I would play the part of a noble-man, and obtain credit enough for some slaves and a few pretty acres. I had also a letter of credit wrote for me by ashipmate in the impenetrable language of the Finn, & tell me who would challenge such a letter as that? But my true concern was Manners, for this is the mark of the gentle-man that he may pee on his host’s shoes, & the host will believe he is himself committing the outrage. Believe me young man I have sat at the court of King Arthur, and I know beautiful manners. Therefor, I tell you, though I am no dab at your fine sayings, I was going to pee on my host’s shoes.

    This rhapsodic speech being done, I asked him what had come of his plan, for as it seemed to me he was not master of a shilling. Yes, said he, I have lost everything, or I should say I ne’er got it, for in the debauched whirl of plantation visits I soon forgot what I was doing. A shame, said I, to which he nodded, laughing and saying, I am a Doctor without the tiniest grains and scruples of learning, and when I betray myself I shall be hanged! Even speaking so he was very cheerful, and seemed certain that all would come right in the end.
    Dr. Dan and I spent long afternoons in each other’s company, and he told me of many things more, viz. the Popish Cruelties of the Spaniards among whom he had liv’d, & the grate pirate Blackeye, and the many shipwrecks he had endured, five or ten shipwrecks I think, for each day he spoke of a new shipwreck so that it seemed his life had consisted of little else. For me these stories were an entertainment, and I gave them little credence, absorb’d as I was in the thoughts and vanities of youth. Yet Mr. Galsworthy attended to them with the lidless absorption of a pucker fish , and soon one of these tales was the cause of a great change that he wrought in the administration of his plantation.
    The gentle lady reader will perhaps