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? ? ? ? Struck by the straightforward simplicity of these replies, the officer next asked, "Do you know anything about your beginning?"
? ? ? ? "No, Sir. But I have heard that I was found in a pretty silklined basket hanging one morning from the knocker of a good man's door in Bristol."
? ? ? ? "Found say you? Well," throwing back his head and looking up and down the new recruit; "Well, it turns out to have been a pretty good find. Hope they'll find some more like you, my man; the fleet sadly needs them."
? ? ? ? Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.
? ? ? ? For the rest, with little or no sharpness of faculty or any trace of the wisdom of the serpent, nor yet quite a dove, he possessed that kind and degree of intelligence going along with the unconventional rectitude of a sound human creature, one to whom not yet has been proffered the questionable apple of knowledge. He was illiterate; he could not read, but he could sing, and like the illiterate nightingale was sometimes the composer of his own song.
? ? ? ? Of self-consciousness he seemed to have little or none, or about as much as we may reasonably impute to a dog of Saint Bernard's breed.
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