Doctor Marigold

Excerpt

I am a Cheap Jack, and my own father’s name was Willum Marigold.  It was in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, but my own father always consistently said, No, it was Willum.  On which point I content myself with looking at the argument this way: If a man is not allowed to know his own name in a free country, how much is he allowed to know in a land of slavery?  As to looking at the argument through the medium of the Register, Willum Marigold come into the world before Registers come up much,—and went out of it too.  They wouldn’t have been greatly in his line neither, if they had chanced to come up before him.