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Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before; ye must remember his tambourine

on that dramatic midnight, so gloomy-jolly.



In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony

and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar color,

driven in one eccentric span.  But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature

dull and torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted,

was at bottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness

peculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays

and festivities with finer, freer relish than any other race.

For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three hundred

and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days.  Nor smile so,

while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has

its brilliancy; behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets.

But Pip loved life, and all life's peaceable securities; so that

the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably

become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere

long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him,

in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires,

that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre

with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once

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of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili,

your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan;

with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes,

and half joes, and quarter joes.  What then should there be

in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful?

By Golconda! let me read it once.  Halloa! here's signs and

wonders truly!  That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome

calls the zodiac, and what my almanack below calls ditto.

I'll get the almanack; and as I have heard devils can be raised

with Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try my hand at raising a meaning

out of these queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar.

Here's the book.  Let's see now.  Signs and wonders;

and the sun, he's always among 'em.  Hem, hem, hem; here they are--

here they go--all alive:  Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull

and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins.  Well; the sun

he wheels among 'em.  Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing

the threshold between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring.

Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places.

You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come

in to supply the thoughts.  That's my small experience,

so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch's navigator,

and Daboll's arithmetic go.  Signs and wonders, eh?  Pity if there

is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders!

There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark!  By Jove, I have it!

Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one

round chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book.

Come, Almanack!  To begin:  there's Aries, or the Ram--

lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--

he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--

that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue,

when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here,