Willies an' the clever Tommies what I read about therein. They was
all good, an' they went to their reward too soon in life for me, who
even in them days regarded death as a stuffy an' unpleasant
diversion. Learnin' at an early period that virtue was its only
reward, an' a-wish-in' others, I says to myself: 'Jim,' says I, 'if
you wishes to become a magnet in this village, be sinful. If so be
as you are a good boy, an' kind to your sister an' all other animals,
you'll end up as a prosperous father with fifteen hundred a year
sure, with never no hope for no public preferment beyond bein' made
the super-intendent of the Sunday-school; but if so be as how you're
bad, you may become famous, an' go to Congress, an' have your picture
in the Sunday noospapers.' So I looks around for books tellin' how
to get 'Famous in Fifty Ways,' an' after due reflection I settles in
my mind that to be a pirate's just the thing for me, seein' as how
it's both profitable an' healthy. Pass-in' over details, let me tell
you that I became a pirate. I ran away to sea, an' by dint of
perseverance, as the Sunday-school book useter say, in my badness I
soon became the centre of a evil lot; an' when I says to 'em, 'Boys,
I wants to be a pirate chief,' they hollers back, loud like, 'Jim,
we're with you,' an' they was. For years I was the terror of the
Venezuelan Gulf, the Spanish Main, an' the Pacific seas, but there
was precious little money into it. The best pay I got was from a
Sunday noospaper which paid me well to sign an article on 'Modern
Piracy' which I didn't write. Finally business got so bad the crew
began to murmur, an' I was at my wits' ends to please 'em; when one
mornin', havin' passed a restless night, I picks up a noospaper and
sees in it that 'Next Saturday's steamer is a weritable treasure-
ship, takin' out twelve million dollars, and the jewels of a certain
prima donna valued at five hundred thousand.' 'Here's my chance,'
says I, an' I goes to sea and lies in wait for the steamer. I