`` Well , old friend , '' said the showman , `` you have not yet told us which way your face is turned this afternoon . '' `` I am taking a trip northward , this warm weather , '' replied the conjurer , `` across the Connecticut first , and then up through Vermont , and may be into Canada before the fall . But I must stop and see the breaking up of the camp-meeting at Stamford . '' I began to think that all the vagrants in New England were converging to the camp-meeting , and had made this wagon their rendezvous by the way . The showman now proposed that , when the shower was over , they should pursue the road to Stamford together , it being sometimes the policy of these people to form a sort of league and confederacy . `` And the young lady too , '' observed the gallant bibliopolist , bowing to her profoundly , `` and this foreign gentleman , as I understand , are on a jaunt of pleasure to the same spot . It would add incalculably to my own enjoyment , and I presume to that of my colleague and his friend , if they could be prevailed upon to join our party . '' This arrangement met with approbation on all hands , nor were any of those concerned more sensible of its advantages than myself , who had no title to be included in it . Having already satisfied myself as to the several modes in which the four others attained felicity , I next set my mind at work to discover what enjoyments were peculiar to the old `` Straggler , '' as the people of the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet . As he pretended to familiarity with the Devil , so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life , by possessing some of the mental and moral characteristics , the lighter and more comic ones , of the Devil in popular stories . Among them might be reckoned a love of deception for its own sake , a shrewd eye and keen relish for human weakness and ridiculous infirmity , and the talent of petty fraud . Thus to this old man there would be pleasure even in the consciousness , so insupportable to some minds , that his whole life was a cheat upon the world , and that , so far as he was concerned with the public , his little cunning had the upper hand of its united wisdom . Every day would furnish him with a succession of minute and pungent triumphs : as when , for instance , his importunity wrung a pittance out of the heart of a miser , or when my silly good-nature transferred a part of my slender purse to his plump leather bag ; or when some ostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than himself ; or when , though he would not always be so decidedly diabolical , his pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scanty living of real indigence . And then what an inexhaustible field of enjoyment , both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve such quantities of minor mischief , was opened to his sneering spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge . All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive of , though I had little sympathy with it . Perhaps , had I been then inclined to admit it , I might have found that the roving life was more proper to him than to either of his companions ; for Satan , to whom I had compared the poor man , has delighted , ever since the time of Job , in `` wandering up and down upon the earth '' ; and indeed a crafty disposition , which operates not in deep-laid plans , but in disconnected tricks , could not have an adequate scope , unless naturally impelled to a continual change of scene and society . My reflections were here interrupted . `` Another visitor ! '' exclaimed the old showman . The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest , which was roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion , and beating violently against our shelter , as if it claimed all those homeless people for its lawful prey , while we , caring little for the displeasure of the elements , sat comfortably talking .
There was now an attempt to open the door , succeeded by a voice , uttering some strange , unintelligible gibberish , which my companions mistook for Greek , and I suspected XXXXX be thieves ' Latin .
Among As across at by of on though to upon