“The rest, eh, Pip?” said Joe, looking at it with a slowly searching eye. “One, two, three. Why, here’s three J’s, and three O’s, and three J-O, Joes, in it, Pip!” I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, read him the whole letter. “Astonishing!” said Joe, when I had finished. “You ARE a scholar.” “How do you spell Gargery, Joe?” I asked him, with a modest patronage. “I don’t spell it at all,” said Joe. “But supposing you did?” “It _can’t_ be supposed,” said Joe. “Tho’ I’m uncommon fond of reading, too.” “Are you, Joe?” “On-common. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he continued, after rubbing his knees a little. “When you _do_ come to a J and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting reading is!” I derived from this last, that Joe’s education, like Steam, was yet in its infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired: “Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?” “No, Pip.” “Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?” “Well, Pip,” said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the fire between the lower bars: “I’ll tell you. My father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my mother most onmerciful. It were a’most the only hammering he did, indeed, ’xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me with a wigor only to be equalled by the wigor with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil. You’re a-listening and understanding, Pip?” “Yes, Joe.” “’Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father several times; and then my mother she’d go out to work, and she’d say, ‘Joe,’ she’d say, ‘now, please God, you shall have some schooling, child,’ and she’d put me to school. But my father were that good in his heart that he couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors of the houses where we was, that they used to be obligated to have no more to do with us and to give us up to him. And then he took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip,” said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking at me, “were a drawback on my learning.” “Certainly, poor Joe!” “Though mind you, Pip,” said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of the poker on the top bar, “rendering unto all their doo, and maintaining equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that good in his heart, don’t you see?” I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so. “Well!” Joe pursued, “somebody must keep the pot a-biling, Pip, or the pot won’t bile, don’t you know?” I saw that, and said so.