"Why, hulloa! hulloa! Mr. Archer," shaking his hand till I thought he
would have dragged the arm clean out of the socket--"How be you, boy?
How be you?" "Right well, Tom, can't you see? Why confound you, you've
grown twenty pound heavier since July!--but here, I'm losing all my
manners!--this is Frank Forester, whom you have heard me talk about so
often! He dropped down here out of the moon, Tom, I believe! at least I
thought about as much of seeing the man in the moon, as of meeting him
in this wooden country--but here he is, as you see, come all the way to
take a look at the natives. And so, you see, as you're about the
greatest curiosity I know of in these parts, I brought him straight up
here to take a peep! Look at him, Frank--look at him well! Now, did you
ever see, in all your life, so extraordinary an old devil?--and yet,
Frank, which no man could possibly believe, the old fat animal has some
good points about him--he can walk some! shoot, as he says, first best!
and drink--good Lord, how he can drink!"
"And that reminds me," exclaimed Tom, who with a ludicrous mixture of
pleasure, bashfulness, and mock anger, had been listening to what he
evidently deemed a high encomium; "that we hav'nt drinked yet; have you
quit drink, Archer, since I was to York? What'll you take, Mr.
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