CHAPTER XIV.

         CHAPTER XV.

         CHAPTER XVI.

         CHAPTER XVII.

   CHAPTER XIII.

   Curius, hain't it? How folks will get to tellin' things, and finally tell 'em so much, that finally they will get to believin' of 'em themselves—boastin' of bein' rich, etc., or bad. Now I have seen folks boast over that, act real haughty because they had been bad and got over it. I've seen temperance lecturers and religious exhorters boast sights and sights over how bad they had been. But they wuzn't tellin' the truth, though they had told the same thing so much that probable they had got to thinkin' so.

   But in the case of one man in petickuler, I found out for myself, for I didn't believe what he wuz a sayin' any of the time.

   Why, he made out in evenin' meetin's, protracted and otherwise, that he had been a awful villain. Why no pirate wuz ever wickeder than he made himself out to be, in the old times before he turned round and become pious.

   But I didn't believe it, for he had a good look to his face, all but the high headed look he had, and sort o' vain.

   But except this one look, his face wuz a good moral face, and I knew that no man could cut up and act as he claimed that he had, without carryin' some marks on the face of the cuttin' up, and also of the actin'.

   And so, as it happened, I went a visitin' (to Josiah's relations) to the very place where he had claimed to do his deeds of wild badness, and I found that he had always been a pattern man—never had done a single mean act, so fur as wuz known.

   Where wuz his boastin' then? As the Bible sez, why, it wuz all vain talk. He had done it to get up a reputation. He had done it because he wuz big feelin' and vain. And he had got so haughty over it, and had told of it so much, that I spoze he believed in it himself.

   Curius! hain't it? But I am a eppisodin', and to resoom. Trueman's wife would talk 

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