In a single bound, old Jim had been elevated to a starry firmament of
importance, from wellnigh the lowest position of insignificance in the
camp, attained by his general worthlessness and shiftlessness--of mind
and demeanor--which qualities had passed into a proverb of the place.
Procrastination, like a cuckoo, had made its nest in his pockets, where
the hands of Jim would hatch its progeny. Labor and he abhorred each
other mightily. He had never been known to strike a lick of work till
larder and stomach were both of them empty and credit had taken to the
hills. He drawled in his speech till the opening parts of the good
resolutions he frequently uttered were old and forgotten before the
remainders were spoken. He loitered in his walk, said the boys, till
he clean forgot whether he was going up hill or down. "Hurry," he had
always said, by way of a motto, "is an awful waste of time that a
feller could go easy in."
Yet in his shambling, easy-going way, old Jim had drifted into nearly
every heart in the camp. His townsmen knew he had once had a good
education, for outcroppings thereof jutted from his personality even as
his cheek-bones jutted out of his russet old countenance.
Not by any means consenting to permit old Jim to understand how
astonishment was oozing from their every pore, the men brought forth by
Keno's news could not, however, entirely mask their incredulity and
interest.
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