'em tip us pretty handsome now and then, or else we could not live; but
you can't depend upon that.
The men who stood round much approved this speech, and one of them said,
It is desperate hard, and if a man sometimes does what is wrong it is
no wonder, and if he gets a dram too much who's to blow him up?
Jerry had taken no part in this conversation, but I never saw his face
look so sad before. The governor had stood with both his hands in his
pockets; now he took his handkerchief out of his hat and wiped his
forehead.
You've beaten me, Sam, he said, for it's all true, and I won't cast
it up to you any more about the police; it was the look in that horse's
eye that came over me. It is hard lines for man and it is hard lines for
beast, and who's to mend it I don't know: but anyway you might tell
the poor beast that you were sorry to take it out of him in that way.
Sometimes a kind word is all we can give 'em, poor brutes, and 'tis
wonderful what they do understand.
A few mornings after this talk a new man came on the stand with Sam's
cab.
Halloo! said one, what's up with Seedy Sam?
He's ill in bed, said the man; he was taken last night in the yard,
and could scarcely crawl home. His wife sent a boy this morning to
say his father was in a high fever and could not get out, so I'm here
instead.
The next morning the same man came again.
How is Sam? inquired the governor.
He's gone, said the man.
What, gone? You don't mean to say he's dead?
Just snuffed out, said the other; he died at four o'clock this
morning; all yesterday he was raving--raving about Skinner, and having
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