After the boy was despatched for the things and my horse taken care
of, we sat for half an hour in the kitchen sipping _mate_ and
conversing very agreeably. Then my host took me out into his garden
behind the house to be out of his wife's way while she was engaged
cooking breakfast, and there he began talking in English.
"Twenty-five years I have been on this continent," said he, telling
me his history, "eighteen of them in the Banda Oriental."
"Well, you have not forgotten your language," I said. "I suppose you
read?"
"Read! What! I would as soon think of wearing trousers. No, no, my
friend, never read. Leave politics alone. When people molest you,
shoot 'em--those are my rules. Edinburgh was my home. Had enough
reading when I was a boy; heard enough psalm-singing, saw enough
scrubbing and scouring to last me my lifetime. My father was a bookseller
in the High Street, near the Cowgate--you know! Mother, she was
pious-they were all pious. Uncle, a minister, lived with us. That
was all worse than purgatory to me. I was educated at the High
School--intended for the ministry, ha, ha! My only pleasure was to
get a book of travels in some savage country, skulk into my room, throw
off my boots, light a pipe, and lie on the floor reading--locked up from
everyone. Sundays just the same, They called me a sinner, said I was
going to the devil--fast.
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