There I
lay, as near the grave as a tomb-stone, when I was just a week old."
"Poor fellow--you could only know this by report, however. And what
was done with you?"
"I suppose, if the truth were known, my father was somewhere about
that yard; and little do I envy the old gentleman his feelings, if he
reflected much, over matters and things. I was sent to the Alms-House,
however; stone-cutters being nat'rally hard-hearted, I suppose. The
fact that I was left among such people, makes me think so much the
more, that my own father must have been one of them, or it never could
have happened. At all events, I was soon rated on the Alms-House
books; and the first thing they did was to give me some name. I was
No. 19, for about a week; at the age of fourteen days, I became Moses
Marble."
"It was an odd selection, that your 'sponsors in baptism' made!"
"Somewhat--Moses came from the scriptur's, they tell me; there being a
person of that name, as I understand, who was turned adrift pretty
much as I was, myself."
"Why, yes--so far as the basket and the abandonment were concerned;
but he was put afloat fairly, and not clapped on a tomb-stone, as if
to threaten him with the grave at the very outset."
"Well, Tombstone came very near being my name. At first, they thought
of giving me the name of the man for whom the stone was intended; but,
that being Zollickoffer, they thought I never should be able to spell
it.
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