{"id":"01KG8AKBZ2XME26D7HAEPXFQVM","cid":"bafkreia3xwyrocn2yxyhnqanchg4cp35eym6dvovjbxu3t34zqr3esi52i","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":4409,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":4327,"text":"doctored me, but no use. When the trial came, I was boosted up and said\r\nmy say.\"\r\n\r\n\"And what was that?\"\r\n\r\n\"My say was that I saw the steel go in, and saw it sticking in.\"\r\n\r\n\"And that hung the gentleman.\"\r\n\r\n\"Hung him with a gold chain! His friends called a meeting in the Park,\r\nand presented him with a gold watch and chain upon his acquittal.\"\r\n\r\n\"Acquittal?\"\r\n\r\n\"Didn't I say he had friends?\"\r\n\r\nThere was a pause, broken at last by the herb-doctor's saying: \"Well,\r\nthere is a bright side to everything. If this speak prosaically for\r\njustice, it speaks romantically for friendship! But go on, my fine\r\nfellow.\"\r\n\r\n\"My say being said, they told me I might go. I said I could not without\r\nhelp. So the constables helped me, asking _where_ would I go? I told\r\nthem back to the 'Tombs.' I knew no other place. 'But where are your\r\nfriends?' said they. 'I have none.' So they put me into a hand-barrow\r\nwith an awning to it, and wheeled me down to the dock and on board a\r\nboat, and away to Blackwell's Island to the Corporation Hospital. There\r\nI got worse--got pretty much as you see me now. Couldn't cure me. After\r\nthree years, I grew sick of lying in a grated iron bed alongside of\r\ngroaning thieves and mouldering burglars. They gave me five silver\r\ndollars, and these crutches, and I hobbled off. I had an only brother\r\nwho went to Indiana, years ago. I begged about, to make up a sum to go\r\nto him; got to Indiana at last, and they directed me to his grave. It\r\nwas on a great plain, in a log-church yard with a stump fence, the old\r\ngray roots sticking all ways like moose-antlers. The bier, set over the\r\ngrave, it being the last dug, was of green hickory; bark on, and green\r\ntwigs sprouting from it. Some one had planted a bunch of violets on the\r\nmound, but it was a poor soil (always choose the poorest soils for\r\ngrave-yards), and they were all dried to tinder. I was going to sit and\r\nrest myself on the bier and think about my brother in heaven, but the\r\nbier broke down, the legs being only tacked. So, after driving some hogs\r\nout of the yard that were rooting there, I came away, and, not to make\r\ntoo long a story of it, here I am, drifting down stream like any other\r\nbit of wreck.\"\r\n\r\nThe herb-doctor was silent for a time, buried in thought. At last,\r\nraising his head, he said: \"I have considered your whole story, my\r\nfriend, and strove to consider it in the light of a commentary on what I\r\nbelieve to be the system of things; but it so jars with all, is so\r\nincompatible with all, that you must pardon me, if I honestly tell you,\r\nI cannot believe it.\"\r\n\r\n\"That don't surprise me.\"\r\n\r\n\"How?\"\r\n\r\n\"Hardly anybody believes my story, and so to most I tell a different\r\none.\"\r\n\r\n\"How, again?\"\r\n\r\n\"Wait here a bit and I'll show ye.\"\r\n\r\nWith that, taking off his rag of a cap, and arranging his tattered\r\nregimentals the best he could, off he went stumping among the passengers\r\nin an adjoining part of the deck, saying with a jovial kind of air:\r\n\"Sir, a shilling for Happy Tom, who fought at Buena Vista. Lady,\r\nsomething for General Scott's soldier, crippled in both pins at glorious\r\nContreras.\"\r\n\r\nNow, it so chanced that, unbeknown to the cripple, a prim-looking\r\nstranger had overheard part of his story. Beholding him, then, on his\r\npresent begging adventure, this person, turning to the herb-doctor,\r\nindignantly said: \"Is it not too bad, sir, that yonder rascal should lie\r\nso?\"\r\n\r\n\"Charity never faileth, my good sir,\" was the reply. \"The vice of this\r\nunfortunate is pardonable. Consider, he lies not out of wantonness.\"\r\n\r\n\"Not out of wantonness. I never heard more wanton lies. In one breath to\r\ntell you what would appear to be his true story, and, in the next, away\r\nand falsify it.\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJM4JACMJM5K6XEKVWTRB","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKBZ2YPXBQDYPTFYF3EDZ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKBZAXEBR0ZHWDY90B90P","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:02.018Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:09.162Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}