"Whence could they have got it?"

"Why, perhaps where they got their names, brother. A gentleman,
who had travelled much, once told me that he had seen the sister of
it about the neck of an Indian queen."

"Some of your names, Jasper, appear to be church names; your own,
for example, and Ambrose, and Sylvester; perhaps you got them from
the Papists, in the times of Popery; but where did you get such a
name as Piramus, a name of Grecian romance? Then some of them
appear to be Slavonian; for example, Mikailia and Pakomovna. I
don't know much of Slavonian; but--"

"What is Slavonian, brother?"

"The family name of certain nations, the principal of which is the
Russian, and from which the word slave is originally derived. You
have heard of the Russians, Jasper?"

"Yes, brother; and seen some. I saw their crallis at the time of
the peace; he was not a bad-looking man for a Russian."

"By the bye, Jasper, I'm half inclined to think that crallis is a
Slavish word. I saw something like it in a lil called 'Voltaire's
Life of Charles.' How you should have come by such names and words
is to me incomprehensible."

"You seem posed, brother."

"I really know very little about you, Jasper."