“I’m not more self-interested, I hope, than another man,” said Mr. Omer. “Look at me! My wind may fail me at any moment, and it ain’t likely that, to my own knowledge, I’d be self-interested under such circumstances. I say it ain’t likely, in a man who knows his wind will go, when it does go, as if a pair of bellows was cut open; and that man a grandfather,” said Mr. Omer.

I said, “Not at all.”

“It ain’t that I complain of my line of business,” said Mr. Omer. “It ain’t that. Some good and some bad goes, no doubt, to all callings. What I wish is, that parties was brought up stronger-minded.”