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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 25m

it so happening that, since the lottery-prize came to him, it had been discovered to Orchis that his health was not very firm, though he had never complained of anything before but a slight ailing of the spleen…

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 2h

"At any rate, I would rather have one of your shares of coal stock than two of this other. Still, considering that the first settlement was by two fugitives, who had swum over naked from the opposite shore—it's a surprising place."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 4h

"Sir, we are masons, one more step aside; I will tell you my story."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 6h

The cosmopolitan, with longing eye upon him, stood as sorely tempted and wavering a moment, then, abruptly stepping towards him, with a look of dissolved surrender…

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 8h

The act of withdrawing from her, seemed, under the circumstances, abrupt.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 10h

"I pretend not to divine your meaning there," said the herb-doctor, after a pause, during which he eyed the Missourian with a kind of pinched expression, mixed of pain and curiosity, as if he grieved at his state of mind…

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 12h

"Sleek or not, he was no uncombed one, but silky bearded and curly headed, and to all but Indians juicy as a peach. But Indians—how the late Colonel John Moredock, Indian-hater of Illinois, did hate Indians, to be sure!"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 14h

"An operator, ah? he operates, does he? My friend, then, is something like what the Indians call a Great Medicine, is he? He operates, he purges, he drains off the repletions."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 16h

Meanwhile, Orchis had gone on a trip to Europe by advice of a physician…

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 18h

But not merely is the backwoodsman content to be alone, but in no few cases is anxious to be so.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 20h

"I don't know about that. The devil is very sagacious. To judge by the event, he appears to have understood man better even than the Being who made him."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 22h

He then, with flighty eagerness, wanted to know who this last person was, and where he was, and whether he could be trusted with money to treble it.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yet, unmindful of the alleviation, a spirit of complaint, at what she impatiently called the bitterness of her lot and the hardness of the world, so preyed upon her, as ere long to hurry her from the obscurity of indigence to the deeper shades of the tomb.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

And the old usurer, too, now beginning to be obstreperous, China Aster paid him his interest and some other pressing debts with money got by, at last, mortgaging the candlery.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

In fine, his too indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Thank you; but no more just now. Fill _your_ glass."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"I suppose," with a sneer, "you are the man I've long heard of—The Happy Man."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"may be regarded as not wholly without the efficacy of a devout sentiment.'"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Madam, or sir, would you visit upon the butterfly the caterpillar?"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"In reality you have just as much as I have."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Come, why did you warn me? Put it, I beseech, in few words, and those English."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Ugh, ugh, ugh!—you are the man he spoke of. Who is he?"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Aye, but are you? Is not that air of yours, so spiritlessly enduring and yielding, the very air of a slave? Who is your master, pray; or are you owned by a company?"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

'A curious point,' the judge would continue, 'which perhaps not everybody, even upon explanation, may fully understand…

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"A genial thought; but your glass there."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Strange," said the auburn-haired gentleman, returning to his friend, "the money was good money."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"But Charlie, dear Charlie, what new notions are these?"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I don't like to see your little boy paddling about without shoes, as he does.'

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"Hung him with a gold chain! His friends called a meeting in the Park, and presented him with a gold watch and chain upon his acquittal."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"So dey do, sar; so dey do. But you see, sar, dese here legs? What ge'mman want to own dese here legs?"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

To some remark the sick man, by word or look, seemed to have just made an impatiently querulous answer, when, with a deprecatory air, the other resumed:

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

But again came nothing but the dumb-show look, as much as to say, "Pray leave me; quacks, and indignation against quacks, both are vain."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"Thrown out of employment, what could Jack Ketch turn his hand to?"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Owing to obstructions against the side windows, the whole place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by narrow, capricious sky-lights in the cornices.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"conducted upon principles involving care, learning, and labor, exceeding what is usual in kindred institutions, the Philosophical Intelligence Office is forced to charge somewhat higher than customary."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"Just now, somehow, I feel as it were trustful and genial."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The word charity, as originally traced, remained throughout uneffaced, not unlike the left-hand numeral of a printed date, otherwise left for convenience in blank.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

If so, thank heaven, the voice of Mark Winsome is not alien but congenial to my larynx.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Be not such a Canada thistle," urged the Methodist, with something less of patience than before.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

As moved by the sight, and conjecturing that here was some battered hero from the Mexican battle-fields, the herb-doctor had sympathetically accosted him as above, and received the above rather dubious reply.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan't smoke till I have washed away the lingering memento of it with wine. But smoke away, you, and pray, don't forget to drink."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Stay, sir"—humming and hawing—"you have forgotten something."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Loneliness, like the sea breeze, blowing off from a thousand leagues of blankness, he did not find, as veteran solitaires do, if anything, too bracing.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The sight of smoke ten miles off is provocation to one more remove from man, one step deeper into nature.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"the panic-makers should be no gainers by it."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Pray, now, if you use the advertisement of business cards, and happen to have one with you, just look at it, and see whether you are not the man I take you for."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Don't, don't leave me, friend; bear with me; age can't help some distrust; it can't, friend, it can't. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Oh, I am so old and miserable. I ought to have a guardian. Tell me, if—"

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

'Still, all this is less advanced as truths of the Indians than as examples of the backwoodsman's impression of them—in which the charitable may think he does them some injustice.

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Yes, Solomon was the first of herb-doctors."

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The Confidence-Man @fidele-log.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"To be sure. But you see—in fact, barber, you must be consistent. No, I won't let you have the money now; I won't let you violate the inmost spirit of our contract, that way. So good-night, and I will see you again."

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