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You can't go on for ever, you'll find, nor yet could my father nor
yet my mother. If you don't go off as a whole when you are about
due, you're liable to go off in part, and two to one your head's the
part. Gradually my father went off his, and my mother went off
hers. It was in a harmless way, but it put out the family where I
boarded them. The old couple, though retired, got to be wholly and
solely devoted to the Cheap Jack business, and were always selling
the family off. Whenever the cloth was laid for dinner, my father
began rattling the plates and dishes, as we do in our line when we
put up crockery for a bid, only he had lost the trick of it, and
mostly let 'em drop and broke 'em. As the old lady had been used to
sit in the cart, and hand the articles out one by one to the old
gentleman on the footboard to sell, just in the same way she handed
him every item of the family's property, and they disposed of it in
their own imaginations from morning to night. At last the old
gentleman, lying bedridden in the same room with the old lady, cries
out in the old patter, fluent, after having been silent for two days
and nights: "Now here, my jolly companions every one,--which the
Nightingale club in a village was held, At the sign of the Cabbage
and Shears, Where the singers no doubt would have greatly excelled,
But for want of taste, voices and ears,--now, here, my jolly
companions, every one, is a working model of a used-up old Cheap
Jack, without a tooth in his head, and with a pain in every bone:
so like life that it would be just as good if it wasn't better, just
as bad if it wasn't worse, and just as new if it wasn't worn out.
Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who has drunk more
gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time than would blow the lid
off a washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thousands of miles
higher than the moon as naught nix naught, divided by the national
debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over.
Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the lot?
Two shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eightpence, sixpence,
fourpence. Twopence? Who said twopence? The gentleman in the
scarecrow's hat? I am ashamed of the gentleman in the scarecrow's
hat. I really am ashamed of him for his want of public spirit. Now
I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come! I'll throw you in a
working model of a old woman that was married to the old Cheap Jack
so long ago that upon my word and honour it took place in Noah's
Ark, before the Unicorn could get in to forbid the banns by blowing
a tune upon his horn. There now! Come! What do you say for both?
I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I don't bear you malice for
being so backward. Here! If you make me a bid that'll only reflect
a little credit on your town, I'll throw you in a warming-pan for
nothing, and lend you a toasting-fork for life. Now come; what do
you say after that splendid offer? Say two pound, say thirty
shillings, say a pound, say ten shillings, say five, say two and
six. You don't say even two and six? You say two and three? No.
You shan't have the lot for two and three. I'd sooner give it to
you, if you was good-looking enough. Here! Missis! Chuck the old
man and woman into the cart, put the horse to, and drive 'em away
and bury 'em!" Such were the last words of Willum Marigold, my own
father, and they were carried out, by him and by his wife, my own
mother, on one and the same day, as I ought to know, having followed
as mourner.
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