"Shet your mouth, you imperdent, slack-jawed dog! Your daddy's a-tryin' to give you some good advice, and you a-pickin' up his words that way. I knowed a young man once, when I lived in Ogletharp, as went down to Augusty and sold a hundred dollars' worth of cotton for his daddy, and some o' them gambollers got him to drinkin', and the _very first_ night he was with 'em they got every cent of his money." "They couldn't get my money in a _week_," said Simon. "Anybody can git these here green feller's money; them's the sort I'm a-gwine to watch for myself. Here's what kin fix the papers jist about as nice as anybody." "Well, it's no use to argify about the matter," said old Jed-diah. "What saith the Scriptur'? 'He that begetteth a fool, doeth it to his sorrow.' Hence, Simon, you're a poor, misubble fool,--so cross your hands!" "You'd jist as well not, daddy; I tell you I'm gwine to follow playin' cards for a livin', and what's the use o' bangin' a feller about it? I'm as smart as any of 'em, and Bob Smith says them Augusty fellers can't make rent off o' me." The Reverend Mr. Suggs had once in his life gone to Augusta; an extent of travel which in those days was a little unusual. His consideration among his neighbors was considerably increased by the circumstance, as he had all the benefit of the popular inference that no man could visit the city of Augusta without acquiring a vast superiority over all his untraveled neighbors, in every department of human knowledge. Mr. Suggs, then, very naturally, felt ineffably indignant that an individual who had never seen any collection of human habitations larger than a log-house village--an individual, in short, no other or better than Bob Smith--should venture to express an opinion concerning the manners, customs, or anything else appertaining to, or in any wise connected with, the _Ultima Thule_ of backwoods Georgians. There were two propositions which witnessed their own truth to the mind of Mr. Suggs: the one was that a man who had never been at Augusta could not know anything about that city, or any place, or anything else; the other, that one who _had_ been there must, of necessity, be not only well informed as to all things connected with the city itself, but perfectly _au fait_ upon all subjects whatsoever. It was therefore in a tone of mingled indignation and contempt that he replied to the last remark of Simon.