The evidence conveyed in this distich is, however, rejected by the skeptical, among modern Astronomers, who consider the passage an allegory. "The man in the South," being supposed typical of the late John C. Calhoun, and the "cold, hot porridge," alluded to the project of nullification.

END OF LECTURE FIRST

AT AUNTY'S HOUSE

By James Whitcomb Riley

WILLY AND THE LADY

By Gelett Burgess

THE ITINERANT TINKER

By Charles Raymond Macauley

Away off in front, and coming toward them along the same path, appeared a singularly misshapen figure. As they came nearer, Dickey saw that it was an old man carrying on his back, at each side and in front of him, some part or piece of almost every imaginable thing. Umbrellas, chair bottoms, panes of glass, knives, forks, pans, dusters, tubs, spoons and stove-lids, graters and grind-stones, saws and samovars,—"Almost everything one could possibly think of," said Dickey to himself.

The moment that the Fantasm caught sight of the strange figure he stopped, and Dickey noticed that his face, which was tucked securely under his left arm, turned quite pale.

"Gracious me!" he exclaimed in a thoroughly frightened way. "There's the Itinerant Tinker again! Now," he added hastily and dolefully, "I shall have to leave you and run for it."

"Why, you're surely not afraid of him!" Dickey exclaimed incredulously. Dickey was really surprised, for the old man, so far as he could judge from that distance, wore an extremely mild and kindly look. "Why do you have to run?" he asked.

"Why? Why?" the Fantasm fairly shouted. "I told you a moment ago that he was the Itinerant Tinker! He tries to mend every broken and unbroken thing in Fantasma Land! Every time he catches me," went on the Fantasm, as he edged cautiously away, "he tries to glue on my head. It's very annoying—and, besides, it hurts! Good-by, Dickey!" he called, and disappeared forthwith into the bushes.

"Isn't he a droll person?" thought Dickey. "He never stops with me more than ten minutes at a time but what he either loses his head or runs away."

By that time the Itinerant Tinker had come up to where Dickey stood. He sat wearily down on a boulder by the wayside, removed some of the heavier merchandise from off his back, and proceeded to mop his face vigorously with a great red handkerchief. Dickey waited several minutes for the old man to speak; but the Itinerant Tinker only regarded him solemnly. He did not even smile.

"It's very warm work, sir," ventured Dickey, at last, "carrying all that stuff—isn't it?"

"Stuff?" returned the Itinerant Tinker, in a very mild, but unmistakably hurt tone of voice.

"Well—" Dickey hesitated timidly.

"Don't call them stuff, please," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "call them necessary commodities."

"But whatever one does call them," Dickey persisted, "they still make you warm to carry them all about, don't they?"

The Itinerant Tinker nodded his head and sighed again.

Again Dickey waited for a considerable space of time. But the old man would have been perfectly content to sit there for ever, Dickey thought, without speaking. "I do wish he would talk," said he to himself. "It's awfully annoying to have him sit there and look at one without saying a word."

"What do you mend, sir?" Dickey inquired at last.

"I tried once," sighed the Itinerant Tinker, sadly, "to mend the break of day. It took me twenty-seven hours and eleven minutes to fix it, and it broke every twenty-four. At that rate how long would it take to patch them all together?"

Another distressing silence.

"Have you figured that out?" whispered the Itinerant Tinker at length.

"I haven't tried," Dickey admitted.

"I tried once," the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was forced to abandon that too."

"In which direction were you going when I met you?" Dickey asked.

The Itinerant Tinker pointed ahead of him along the path and mopped his bald head.

"But where?" insisted Dickey.

"To the Crypt. I was going to the Crypt," murmured the Itinerant Tinker, "to see whether I couldn't get some umbrellas to mend."

"But they don't need umbrellas in the Crypt, do they?" Dickey asked, surprised.

"No, they don't," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "and that's the reason I'm going there."

"If you don't mind," said Dickey, "I should like to go with you."

Without a word of reply the Itinerant Tinker rose slowly and painfully to his feet, rearranged on his back the merchandise he had laid aside, and started off up the hill, with Dickey following closely at his heels.

"I tried to mend the Great Dipper once," resumed the Itinerant Tinker, at length. "I only succeeded, however, in crooking the handle; but it looks better that way, I think."

"How did you manage to reach it?" asked Dickey, a little doubtfully.

"I climbed up the Milky Way," replied the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "In order to reach it after I got there, I was obliged to stand on the horn of the moon. It was a very perilous undertaking."

Dickey couldn't believe quite all that the Itinerant Tinker was telling him. But his mild and gentle eyes wore such a serious expression that he very much disliked to doubt the old man's word.

"Speaking of the moon," went on the Itinerant Tinker after a while, "I tried once to make her stand up—after she had set, you know. It proved a thankless task. She treated me very rudely, indeed. By the by, have you seen the Flighty-wight?"

"No, sir; I have not," replied Dickey.

"He's always jumping at conclusions, you know. I jumped at a conclusion once, fell into disgrace, and was very much cut up over it. I tried to patch him up and he called me an old meddler! You haven't heard of such ingratitude before, I fancy?"

"It was very mean of him, I think," said Dickey, sympathetically.

"Oh, that's nothing," pursued the Itinerant Tinker, in a melancholy tone. "That's nothing! I once attempted to solder a new tip on the Wizard's wand. He turned me into a rabbit, he did."

"Whatever did you do then?" asked Dickey.

"I protested, of course. He merely said that he was only making game of me. But if there's any one thing that I can do better than another," went on the Itinerant Tinker, after another embarrassing pause, "it's piecing together a split infinitive. Would you like me to show you how it's done?"

"Indeed, I should," Dickey eagerly answered; "very much, indeed."

"Very well, then. Just give me time to set down these necessary commodities, and I'll show you exactly the manner in which it's done and undone."

After he had rid himself of his awkward burden, the Itinerant Tinker carefully selected a saw from his kit of tools.

"Is that a log over there?" he asked, pointing toward a mound of earth. "I'm a trifle nearsighted, you know."

"No," Dickey replied. "But there's one off there, just to the other side. A big one, too."

"The identical thing," said the Itinerant Tinker. Whereupon he walked over to it and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off its smooth end.

"Now," said he, after he had finished the rather difficult task, oiled his saw and returned it to his kit, "I proceed to write the word love in the infinitive mood."

"Is that a sad mood?" asked Dickey. "It sounds very much like it, I think."

Without heeding the question in the least the Itinerant Tinker turned the slab for Dickey's inspection, and he read on it the two words, to love. Taking up a wedge the Itinerant Tinker printed the word dearly on the flat side of it, and then skilfully drove it between the words to and love. When he again held it up for Dickey to see, it read: to dearly love.

"There!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker, holding the slab proudly at arm's length and turning his head slowly from side to side, "that's what I call a fine bit of ingenuity!"

"So that's a split infinitive, is it?" Dickey asked.

"Why, you stupid boy!" the Itinerant Tinker exclaimed; "didn't you just this minute see me split it?"

"Yes, sir; I did," Dickey murmured rather shamefacedly.

"Then, if I split it, what else could it be but a split infinitive, I'd like to know?"

"Well," said Dickey, a bit timidly, "I never heard a block of wood called an infinitive before."

"Oh, my!" sighed the Itinerant Tinker, as he sank down on his pile of merchandise. "How you do weary me!"

He sat looking at the slab of wood for such a long time, turning it admiringly now that way, now this, that poor Dickey began to grow quite nervous.

"Please," he ventured at last, "won't you show me now how you mend it?" Dickey didn't care in the least to see it done, but he imagined that by asking the question he would regain the good will of the old man.

"There you go again! There you go!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker. He actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it—I knew it!"

"Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently.

"You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll take me hours and hours to glue that together. But first," he went on, after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split infinitive can be mended."

Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and, after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them carefully and neatly together.

"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "that's the proper way to bring together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of splitting your infinitives; but if you do, call on the Itinerant Tinker and he'll straighten 'em out for you."

"Before we move along," he resumed, after he had loaded himself with his merchandise, "perhaps you'd like to listen to a story?"

"I should, if it wasn't about split infinitives," replied Dickey, doubtfully. "They really make me quite dizzy."

"Well, it's not," said the Itinerant Tinker, smiling vaguely. "It's the story of the

PEDANTIC PEDAGOGUE

When the Itinerant Tinker had finished his story he rose wearily to his feet.

"If we don't hurry along," he said, "I doubt whether we shall reach the Crypt in time to take our tea. I never—"

He was interrupted at this point by a shrill voice, coming, it seemed, from the direction of the forest.

"Jingle-junk! jingle-junk! jingle-junk!" shouted the penetrating voice.

The Itinerant Tinker stopped instantly. An angry frown gathered on his brow.

"I know who that is," he muttered. "It's Wamba, son of Witless, the Jester of Ivanhoe. I've been trying to catch him for seventy-two years, and if I do, I'll—"

Dickey never heard the end of the sentence for the Itinerant Tinker made for the wood at a surprisingly swift gait. The incident had its really amusing side, too; for he left behind him a trail of pots, pans, boilers, stove-lids, potato-mashers—in fact, Dickey thought, he must have dropped almost all of his "necessary commodities" by the time he had vanished into the wood.

THE STRIKE OF ONE

By Elliott Flower

Danny Burke was discharged.

A certain distinguished ex-President of the United States probably would have said that he was discharged for "pernicious activity"; but the head of the branch messenger-office merely said that he was "an infernal nuisance."

Danny was a good union man. As a matter of fact, he was a boy, and a small boy at that; but he would have scorned any description that did not put him down as "a good union man." Danny's environment had been one of uncompromising unionism, and that was what ailed him. He wanted to advance the union idea. To this end, he undertook to organize the other messengers in the branch office, advancing all the arguments that he had heard his mother and his father use in their discussions. The boys thought favorably of the scheme, but most of them were inclined to let some one else do the experimenting. It might result disastrously. Just to encourage them, Danny became insolent, as he had already become inattentive; he told the manager what he would do and what he would not do, and positively declined to deliver a message that would carry his work a few minutes beyond quitting-time.

Then Danny was discharged—and he laughed. Discharge him! Well, he'd show them a thing or two.

"We'll arbitrate," he announced.

"Get out!" ordered the manager.

"You got to arbitrate," insisted Danny. "You got to confer with your men or you're goin' to have a strike!" Danny had heard so much about conferences that he felt he was on safe ground now. "We can't stand fer no autycrats!" he added. "You got to meet your men fair an' talk it over. A committee—"

"Get out!" repeated the manager, rising from his desk, near which the waiting boys were seated.

"Men," yelled Danny, "I calls a strike an' a boycott!"

Two of the boys rose as if to follow him, but the manager was too quick. He had Danny by the collar before Danny knew what had happened, and the struggling boy was marched to the door and pushed out. The boys who had risen promptly subsided.

Danny was too astonished for words. In all his extended hearsay knowledge of strikes he never had heard of anything like this. There was nothing heroic in it at all. He had expected a conference, and, instead, he was ignominiously handled and thrust into the street.

Danny sat down on a pile of paving-stones to think it over. Without reasoning the matter out, he now regarded himself as a union. The other members had deserted him, but he was on a strike; and somehow he had absorbed the idea that the men who were striking were always the union men. So, this being a strike of one, he was an entire union. It did not take him long to decide that the first thing to do was to "picket the plant." That was a familiar phrase, and he knew the meaning of it. Everything was nicely arranged for him, too. The street was being paved, and he was sitting on some paving-stones, with a pile of gravel beside him. He selected fifteen or twenty of the largest stones from the gravel-pile.

A woman was the first victim. As she was about to enter the messenger-office she was startled by a yell of warning from Danny.

"Hey, you!" he shouted. "Keep out!"

She backed away hastily, and looked up to see if anything were about to fall on her.

"Why should I keep out?" she asked at last.

"'Cause you'll git hit with a rock if you don't," was the prompt reply.

"But, little boy—" she began.

"I ain't a little boy," asserted Danny. "I'm a union."

The woman looked puzzled, but she finally decided that this was some boyish joke.

"You'd better run home," she said, and turned to enter the messenger-office. She could not refrain from looking over her shoulder, however, and she saw that he was poised for a throw.

"Don't do that!" she cried hastily. "You might hurt me."

"Sure I'll hurt you," was the reply. "I'll smash your block in if you don't git a move on."

The woman decided to look for another messenger-office, and Danny, triumphant, resumed his seat on the paving-stones.

Then came another messenger, returning from a trip.

"What's the matter, Danny?" he asked.

"Got the plant picketed," asserted Danny. "Nobody can't go in or come out."

"I'm goin' in," said the other boy.

"You!" exclaimed Danny scornfully, as he suddenly caught the boy and swung him over on to the stones.

"No, I ain't, Danny," the boy hastened to say, for Danny gave every evidence of an intent to batter in his face.

"Sure?" asked Danny.

"Honest."

"This here's a strike," explained Danny.

"Oh, I didn't know that," apologized the boy. "I ain't a strike-breaker."

Danny let him up, but made him sit on another pile of stones a short distance away. He would be all right as long as he kept still, Danny explained, but no longer.

While Danny was continuing strike operations with rapidly growing enthusiasm, the woman he had first stopped was taking an unexpected part in the little comedy. She had gone to another of the branch offices with the message she wished delivered, and had told of the trouble she had experienced. Thereupon the manager of this office called up the manager of the other on the telephone.

"What's the matter over there?" he asked.

"Nothing," was the surprised reply. "Who said there was?"

"Why, a woman has just reported that she was driven away by a boy with a pile of stones."

The manager hastened to the window, and realized at once that something was decidedly wrong. On a pile of paving-stones directly in front of the door sat the proud and happy Danny. At his feet there was a pile of smaller stones, and he held a few in his hands. On his right was a boy who had started on a trip a short time before, and on his left was one who should have reported back. A man was gesticulating excitedly, a number of others and some boys were laughing, and Danny seemed to be intimating that any one who tried to enter would be hurt.

"Jim," said the manager to the largest messenger, "go out there and see what's the matter with Danny Burke. Tell him I'll have him arrested if he doesn't get out."

Danny was a wise general. He wanted no prisoners that he could not handle easily, and this big boy would be dangerous to have within his lines. The big boy was a sort of star messenger, who did not fraternize with Danny anyhow. Consequently Danny fired a volley the moment he saw who it was, and the big boy hastily retreated, bearing with him one bump on the forehead.

"That's Jim," Danny explained to the increasing crowd. "He's the biggest, next to the boss. Watch me nail the boss."

"You're the stuff!" exclaimed some of the delighted loiterers, thus proving that the loiterers are just as anxious to see trouble in a small strike as in a large one.

Danny picked out a stone considerably larger than the others, for he expected the manager to appear next, and the manager had incurred his personal enmity. In the case of his victims thus far, he had acted merely on principle—to win his point.

The manager appeared. For his own prestige (necessary to maintain discipline), the manager had to do something, but he felt reasonably sure that the dignity of his official position would make Danny less hasty and strenuous than he had been with others. The manager planned to extend the olive branch and at the same time raise the siege by beckoning Danny in, so that he might reason with him and show him how surely he would land in a police station if he would not consent to be a good boy. This would be quicker and better than summoning an officer. But the manager got the big stone in the pit of his stomach just as he had raised his hand to beckon, and he and his dignity collapsed together, with a most plebeian grunt. As he had not closed the door, he quickly rolled inside, where he lay on the floor with his hands on his stomach and listened to the joyous yelps of the crowd outside. This was too much for the manager.

"Call up police headquarters," he said, still holding his stomach as if fearful that it might become detached, "and tell them there's a riot here."

The boy addressed obeyed literally.

Meanwhile Danny had decided that, as victory perched on his banners, it was time to state the terms on which he would permit the enemy to surrender, but he was too wise to put himself in the enemy's power before these terms were settled.

"Go in, Tim," was the order he gave to one of his prisoners, "an' tell the guy with the stomick-ache that when he recognizes the union an' gives me fifty cents more a week an' makes a work-day end when the clock strikes, I'm willin' to call it off."

"Make him come down handsome," advised one of the loiterers.

"I guess I got 'em on the run," said Danny exultingly.

But Tim went in and failed to come out. This was not Tim's fault, however, for the manager released his hold on his stomach long enough to get a grip on Tim's collar. The striker's defiance seemed to displease him, and, because he could not shake Danny, he shook Tim, and he said things to Tim that he would have preferred to say to Danny. Then his excited harangue was interrupted by the sound of a gong, which convinced him that he might again venture to the door.

Danny was in the grasp of the strong arm of the law. A half dozen policemen had valiantly rushed through the crowd and captured the entire besieging party, which was Danny.

"What you doin'?" demanded Danny angrily.

"What are you doing?" retorted the police sergeant in charge.

"This here's a strike," asserted Danny. "I got the plant picketed."

"Run him in!" ordered the manager from the doorway.

"What's the row?" asked the sergeant.

"That's the row," said the manager, pointing to Danny.

"That!" exclaimed the sergeant scornfully. "You said it was a riot. You don't call that kid a riot, do you?"

"Well, it's assault and battery, anyhow," insisted the manager. "He hit me with a rock."

"Where?" asked the sergeant.

"Where he carries his brains," said Danny, which made the crowd yelp with joy again.

"Lock him up!" cried the manager angrily. "I'll prefer the charge and appear against him."

The sergeant looked at Danny and then at the manager.

"Say!" he said at last, "you ain't got the nerve to charge this kid with assaulting you, have you?"

"I'm going to do it," said the manager.

"Oh, all right," returned the sergeant disgustedly.

The crowd was disposed to protest, but the police were in sufficient force to make resistance unsafe, and Danny was lifted into the patrol-wagon.

At the station the captain happened to be present when Danny was brought in, escorted by a wagon-load of policemen.

"What's the charge?" asked the captain.

"Assault and battery on a grown man!" was the scornful reply of the sergeant.

"What did he do?" persisted the surprised captain.

"Hurt his digestion with a rock," explained the sergeant.

"I was on strike," said Danny. "I'm a good union man. You got no business to touch me."

"I understand," said the sergeant, "that he was discharged, and he stationed himself outside with a pile of rocks."

"You've no right to do that," the captain told Danny.

"They all do it," asserted Danny.

This was so near the truth that the captain thought it wise to dodge the subject.

"Of course, if no one else will take a man's place," he explained, "the employer will have to take him back or—"

"There wasn't nobody tryin' to take my place—not while I was there!" asserted Danny belligerently.

"That's no lie, either," laughed the sergeant. "He had the office tied up tight."

Danny swelled with pride at this testimonial to his prowess. Then it suddenly occurred to him that the sergeant did not act as he talked.

"What'd you butt in for, then?" he demanded.

"It was his duty," said the captain.

"Ho!" exclaimed Danny. "It's your business to protect the public, ain't it?"

"Of course," admitted the captain.

"Well, ain't we the public?"

The captain laughed uneasily. His experience as a policeman had left him very much in doubt as to who were the public. Both sides to a controversy always claimed that distinction, and the law-breaker was usually the louder in his claims. Danny's inability to see anything but his own side of the case was far from unusual.

The captain took Danny into his private office and talked to him. The captain did not wish to lock up the boy, so he sent for Danny's father and also for the manager of the branch messenger-office. Meanwhile he tried to explain the matter to Danny, but Danny was obtuse. Why should not he do as his father and his father's friends did? When they had a disagreement with the boss, they picketed the plant, and ensuing incidents sent many people to the hospitals. Why was it worse for one boy to do this than it was for some hundreds or thousands of men? Danny was confident that he was within his rights.

"Dad knows," he said in conclusion. "Dad'll say I'm right. You got no business mixin' in."

"Dad's coming," the captain told him.

The manager came first. "The boy ought to be punished," said he. "He hit me with a rock."

"I wish you'd seen him," said the beaming Danny to the captain, for the recollection of that victory made all else seem trivial. "Say! he doubled up like a clown droppin' into a barrel."

"If he isn't punished," asserted the glowering manager, "he'll get worse and worse and end by going to the devil."

"Perhaps," replied the captain. "But just stand beside him a moment, please. Don't dodge, Danny. He'll go behind the bars if he touches you. Stand side by side."

They did so.

"Now," said the captain to the manager, "how do you think you'll look, standing beside him in the police court and accusing him of assault and battery?"

"Like a fool," replied the manager promptly, forced to laugh in spite of himself.

"And what kind of a story—illustrated story—will it be for the papers?" persisted the captain.

"Let him go," said the manager; "but he ought to be whaled."

It was at this point that Dan arrived, accompanied by his wife.

"F'r why sh'u'd he be whaled?" demanded the latter aggressively.

The matter was explained to her.

"Is that thrue, Danny?" she asked.

"Sure," replied the boy.

"Well, I'd like to see anny wan outside the fam'ly whale ye," she said, with a defiant look at the manager, "but I'll do it mesilf."

Danny was astounded. In this quarter at least he had expected support. He glanced at his father.

"I'll take a lick or two at ye mesilf," said Dan. "The idee of breakin' the law an' makin' all this throuble."

"You've done it yourself," argued Danny.

"Shut up!" commanded Dan. "Ye don't know what ye're talkin' about. A sthrike's wan thing an' disordherly conduct's another."

"This was a strike," insisted Danny.

"Where's the union?" demanded Dan.

"I'm it," replied Danny. "I was organizin' it."

"If ye'll let him go, Captain," said Dan, ignoring his son's reply, "I'll larrup him good."

"For what?" wailed Danny. "I was only doin' what you said was right, an' what mom said was right, an' what you've all been talkin' for years. You've been a picket yourself, an' I've heard you laughin' over the way men who wouldn't strike was done up. We got to organize. Wasn't I organizin'? We got to enforce our rights. Wasn't I enforcin' them? We got to discourage traitors to the cause of labor. Wasn't I discouragin' them? Didn't the union tie up a plant once when you was discharged? What's eatin' you, dad?"

Danny's own presentation of the case was so strong that it gave him courage. But the last question made Dan jump, although he was not accustomed to any extraordinary show of respect from his son.

"The lad has no sinse," he announced, "but I'll larrup him plenty. Ye get an exthry wan f'r that, Danny. I'll tache ye that ye're not runnin' things."

"Makin' throuble f'r father an' mother an' th' good man that's payin' ye wages we need at home," added Mrs. Burke.

"Now, what do you think of that?" whimpered Danny, as he was led away. "I'm to be licked fer doin' what he does. Why don't he teach himself the same, an' stop others from doin' what he talks?"

"Danny," said the commiserating captain, "you're to be licked for learning your lesson too well, and that's the truth."

But that did not make the situation any the less painful for Danny.

SIMON STARTS IN THE WORLD

By J.J. Hooper

Until Simon entered his seventeenth year he lived with his father, an old "hard-shell" Baptist preacher, who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boy—or endeavored to do so—according to the strictest requisitions of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in Middle Georgia, which was then newly settled; and Simon, whose wits were always too sharp for his father's, contrived to contract all the coarse vices incident to such a region. He stole his mother's roosters to fight them at Bob Smith's grocery, and his father's plow-horses to enter them in "quarter" matches at the same place. He pitched dollars with Bob Smith himself, and could "beat him into doll rags" whenever it came to a measurement. To crown his accomplishments, Simon was tip-top at the game of "old sledge," which was the fashionable game of that era, and was early initiated in the mysteries of "stocking the papers." The vicious habits of Simon were, of course, a sore trouble to his father, Elder Jedediah. He reasoned, he counseled, he remonstrated, and he lashed; but Simon was an incorrigible, irreclaimable devil. One day the simple-minded old man returned rather unexpectedly to the field, where he had left Simon and Ben and a negro boy named Bill at work. Ben was still following his plow, but Simon and Bill were in a fence corner, very earnestly engaged at "seven up." Of course the game was instantly suspended as soon as they spied the old man, sixty or seventy yards off, striding towards them.

It was evidently a "gone case" with Simon and Bill; but our hero determined to make the best of it. Putting the cards into one pocket, he coolly picked up the small coins which constituted the stake, and fobbed them in the other, remarking, "Well, Bill, this game's blocked; we'd as well quit."

"But, Mass Simon," remarked the boy, "half dat money's mine. Ain't you gwine to lemme hab 'em?"

"Oh, never mind the money, Bill; the old man's going to take the bark off both of us; and besides, with the hand I helt when we quit, I should 'a' beat you and won it all, any way."

"Well, but Mass Simon, we nebber finish de game, and de rule—"

"Go to the devil with your rule!" said the impatient Simon. "Don't you see daddy's right down upon us, with an armful of hickories? I tell you, I helt nothin' but trumps, and could 'a' beat the horns off a billy-goat. Don't that satisfy you? Somehow or another, you're d—d hard to please!" About this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg."

Bill was perforce compelled to submit to this inequitable adjustment of his claim to a share of the stakes; and of course agreed to swear to the game of mumble-peg. All this was settled, and a pig driven into the ground, slyly and hurriedly, between Simon's legs as he sat on the ground, just as the old man reached the spot. He carried under his left arm several neatly-trimmed sprouts of formidable length, while in his left hand he held one which he was intently engaged in divesting of its superfluous twigs.

"Soho, youngsters!—you in the fence corner, and the crap in the grass. What saith the Scriptur', Simon? 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you and that nigger been a-doin'?"

Bill shook with fear, but Simon was cool as a cucumber, and answered his father to the effect that they had been wasting a little time in the game of mumble-peg.

"Mumble-peg! mumble-peg!" repeated old Mr. Suggs. "What's that?"

Simon explained the process of rooting for the peg: how the operator got upon his knees, keeping his arms stiff by his sides, leaned forward, and extracted the peg with his teeth.

"So you git upon your knees, do you, to pull up that nasty little stick! You'd better git upon 'em to ask mercy for your sinful souls and for a dyin' world. But let's see one o' you git the peg up now."

The first impulse of our hero was to volunteer to gratify the curiosity of his worthy sire, but a glance at the old man's countenance changed his "notion," and he remarked that "Bill was a long ways the best hand." Bill, who did not deem Simon's modesty an omen very favorable to himself, was inclined to reciprocate, compliments with his young master; but a gesture of impatience from the old man set him instantly upon his knees, and, bending forward, he essayed to lay hold with his teeth of the peg, which Simon, just at that moment, very wickedly pushed a half inch further down. Just as the breeches and hide of the boy were stretched to the uttermost, old Mr. Suggs brought down his longest hickory, with both hands, upon the precise spot where the tension was greatest. With a loud yell, Bill plunged forward, upsetting Simon, and rolled in the grass, rubbing the castigated part with fearful energy. Simon, though overthrown, was unhurt; and he was mentally complimenting himself upon the sagacity which had prevented his illustrating the game of mumble-peg for the paternal amusement, when his attention was arrested by the old man's stooping to pick up something—what is it?—a card upon which Simon had been sitting, and which, therefore, had not gone with the rest of the pack into his pocket. The simple Mr. Suggs had only a vague idea of the pasteboard abomination called cards; and though he decidedly inclined to the opinion that this was one, he was by no means certain of the fact. Had Simon known this he would certainly have escaped; but he did not. His father, assuming the look of extreme sapiency, which is always worn by the interrogator who does not desire or expect to increase his knowledge by his questions, asked:

"What's this, Simon?"

"The Jack-a-dimunts," promptly responded Simon, who gave up all as lost after this faux pas.

"What was it doin' down thar, Simon, my sonny?" continued Mr. Suggs, in an ironically affectionate tone of voice.

"I had it under my leg, thar to make it on Bill, the first time it come trumps," was the ready reply.

"What's trumps?" asked Mr. Suggs, with a view of arriving at the import of the word.

"Nothin' ain't trumps now," said Simon, who misapprehended his father's meaning, "but clubs was, when you come along and busted up the game."

A part of this answer was Greek to the Reverend Mr. Suggs, but a portion of it was full of meaning. They had, then, most unquestionably, been "throwing" cards, the scoundrels! the "oudacious" little hellions!

"To the 'mulberry' with both on ye, in a hurry," said the old man sternly. But the lads were not disposed to be in a "hurry," for the "mulberry" was the scene of all formal punishment administered during work hours in the field. Simon followed his father, however, but made, as he went along, all manner of "faces" at the old man's back; gesticulated as if he were going to strike him between the shoulders with his fists, and kicking at him so as almost to touch his coat tail with his shoe. In this style they walked on to the mulberry-tree, in whose shade Simon's brother Ben was resting.

It must not be supposed that, during the walk to the place of punishment, Simon's mind was either inactive, or engaged in suggesting the grimaces and contortions wherewith he was pantomimically expressing his irreverent sentiments toward his father. Far from it. The movements of his limbs and features were the mere workings of habit—the self-grinding of the corporeal machine—for which his reasoning half was only remotely responsible. For while Simon's person was thus, on its own account "making game" of old Jed'diah, his wits, in view of the anticipated flogging, were dashing, springing, bounding, darting about, in hot chase of some expedient suitable to the necessities of the case; much after the manner in which puss—when Betty, armed with the broom, and hotly seeking vengeance for pantry robbed or bed defiled, has closed upon her the garret doors and windows—attempts all sorts of impossible exits, to come down at last in the corner, with panting side and glaring eye, exhausted and defenseless. Our unfortunate hero could devise nothing by which he could reasonably expect to escape the heavy blows of his father. Having arrived at this conclusion and the "mulberry" about the same time, he stood with a dogged look, awaiting the issue.

The old man Suggs made no remark to any one while he was sizing up Bill,—a process which, though by no means novel to Simon, seemed to excite in him a sort of painful interest. He watched it closely, as if endeavoring to learn the precise fashion of his father's knot; and when at last Bill was swung up a-tiptoe to a limb, and the whipping commenced, Simon's eye followed every movement of his father's arm; and as each blow descended upon the bare shoulders of his sable friend, his own body writhed and "wriggled" in involuntary sympathy.

"It's the devil, it is," said Simon to himself, "to take such a wallopin' as that. Why, the old man looks like he wants to git to the holler, if he could,—rot his old picter! It's wuth, at the least, fifty cents—je-e-miny, how that hurt!—yes, it's wuth three-quarters of a dollar to take that 'ere lickin'! Wonder if I'm 'predestinated,' as old Jed'diah says, to git the feller to it? Lord, how daddy blows! I do wish to God he'd bust wide open, the durned old deer-face! If 'twa'n't for Ben helpin' him, I b'lieve I'd give the old dog a tussel when it comes to my turn. It couldn't make the thing no wuss, if it didn't make it no better. 'Drot it! what do boys have daddies for anyhow? 'Tain't for nuthin' but jist to beat 'em and work 'em. There's some use in mammies. I kin poke my finger right in the old 'oman's eye, and keep it thar; and if I say it ain't thar, she'll say so, too. I wish she was here to hold daddy off. If 'twa'n't so fur I'd holler for her, anyhow. How she would cling to the old fellow's coat-tail!"

Mr. Jedediah Suggs let down Bill and untied him. Approaching Simon, whose coat was off, "Come, Simon, son," said he, "cross them hands; I'm gwine to correct you."

"It ain't no use, daddy," said Simon.

"Why so, Simon?"

"Jist bekase it ain't. I'm gwine to play cards as long as I live. When I go off to myself, I'm gwine to make my livin' by it. So what's the use of beatin' me about it?"

Old Mr. Suggs groaned, as he was wont to do in the pulpit, at this display of Simon's viciousness.

"Simon," said he, "you're a poor ignunt creetur. You don't know nothin', and you've never been nowhars. If I was to turn you off, you'd starve in a week."

"I wish you'd try me," said Simon, "and jist see. I'd win more money in a week than you can make in a year. There ain't nobody round here kin make seed corn off o' me at cards. I'm rale smart," he added with great emphasis.

"Simon! Simon! you poor unlettered fool. Don't you know that all card-players and chicken-fighters and horse-racers go to hell? You crack-brained creetur, you! And don't you know that them that plays cards always loses their money, and—"

"Who wins it all, then, daddy?" asked Simon.

"Shet your mouth, you imperdent, slack-jawed dog! Your daddy's a-tryin' to give you some good advice, and you a-pickin' up his words that way. I knowed a young man once, when I lived in Ogletharp, as went down to Augusty and sold a hundred dollars' worth of cotton for his daddy, and some o' them gambollers got him to drinkin', and the very first night he was with 'em they got every cent of his money."

"They couldn't get my money in a week," said Simon. "Anybody can git these here green feller's money; them's the sort I'm a-gwine to watch for myself. Here's what kin fix the papers jist about as nice as anybody."

"Well, it's no use to argify about the matter," said old Jed-diah. "What saith the Scriptur'? 'He that begetteth a fool, doeth it to his sorrow.' Hence, Simon, you're a poor, misubble fool,—so cross your hands!"

"You'd jist as well not, daddy; I tell you I'm gwine to follow playin' cards for a livin', and what's the use o' bangin' a feller about it? I'm as smart as any of 'em, and Bob Smith says them Augusty fellers can't make rent off o' me."

The Reverend Mr. Suggs had once in his life gone to Augusta; an extent of travel which in those days was a little unusual. His consideration among his neighbors was considerably increased by the circumstance, as he had all the benefit of the popular inference that no man could visit the city of Augusta without acquiring a vast superiority over all his untraveled neighbors, in every department of human knowledge. Mr. Suggs, then, very naturally, felt ineffably indignant that an individual who had never seen any collection of human habitations larger than a log-house village—an individual, in short, no other or better than Bob Smith—should venture to express an opinion concerning the manners, customs, or anything else appertaining to, or in any wise connected with, the Ultima Thule of backwoods Georgians. There were two propositions which witnessed their own truth to the mind of Mr. Suggs: the one was that a man who had never been at Augusta could not know anything about that city, or any place, or anything else; the other, that one who had been there must, of necessity, be not only well informed as to all things connected with the city itself, but perfectly au fait upon all subjects whatsoever. It was therefore in a tone of mingled indignation and contempt that he replied to the last remark of Simon.

"Bob Smith says, does he? And who's Bob Smith? Much does Bob Smith know about Augusty! He's been thar, I reckon! Slipped off yerly some mornin', when nobody warn't noticin', and got back afore night! It's only a hundred and fifty mile. Oh, yes, Bob Smith knows all about it! I don't know nothin' about it! I ain't never been to Augusty—I couldn't find the road thar, I reckon—ha, ha! Bob—Sm-ith! If he was only to see one of them fine gentlemen in Augusty, with his fine broadcloth, and bell-crown hat, and shoe-boots a-shinin' like silver, he'd take to the woods and kill himself a-runnin'. Bob Smith! That's whar all your devilment comes from, Simon."

"Bob Smith's as good as anybody else, I judge; and a heap smarter than some. He showed me how to cut Jack," continued Simon, "and that's more nor some people can do, if they have been to Augusty."

"If Bob Smith kin do it," said the old man, "I kin, too. I don't know it by that name; but if it's book knowledge or plain sense, and Bob kin do it, it's reasonable to s'pose that old Jed'diah Suggs won't be bothered bad. Is it any ways similyar to the rule of three, Simon?"

"Pretty similyar, daddy, but not adzactly," said Simon, drawing a pack from his pocket to explain. "Now, daddy," he proceeded, "you see these here four cards is what we call the Jacks. Well, now, the idee is, if you'll take the pack and mix 'em all up together, I'll take off a passel from the top, and the bottom one of them I take off will be one of the Jacks."

"Me to mix 'em fust?" said old Jed'diah.

"Yes."

"And you not to see but the back of the top one, when you go to 'cut,' as you call it?"

"Jist so, daddy."

"And the backs all jist' as like as kin be?" said the senior Suggs, examining the cards.

"More alike nor cow-peas," said Simon.

"It can't be done, Simon," observed the old man, with great solemnity.

"Bob Smith kin do it, and so kin I."

"It's agin nater, Simon; thar ain't a man in Augusty, nor on top of the yearth, that kin do it!"

"Daddy," said our hero, "ef you'll bet me—"

"What!" thundered old Mr. Suggs. "Bet, did you says?" and he came down with a scorer across Simon's shoulders. "Me, Jed-diah Suggs, that's been in the Lord's sarvice these twenty years,—me bet, you nasty, sassy, triflin', ugly—"

"I didn't go to say that, daddy; that warn't what I meant adzactly. I went to say that ef you'd let me off from this her maulin' you owe me, and give me 'Bunch,' if I cut Jack, I'd give you all this here silver, ef I didn't,—that's all. To be sure, I allers knowed you wouldn't bet."

Old Mr. Suggs ascertained the exact amount of the silver which his son handed him, in an old leathern pouch, for inspection. He also, mentally, compared that sum with an imaginary one, the supposed value of a certain Indian pony, called "Bunch," which he had bought for his "old woman's" Sunday riding, and which had sent the old lady into a fence corner the first and only time she ever mounted him. As he weighed the pouch of silver in his hand, Mr. Suggs also endeavored to analyze the character of the transaction proposed by Simon. "It sartinly can't be nothin' but givin', no way it kin be twisted," he murmured to himself. "I know he can't do it, so there's no resk. What makes bettin'? The resk. It's a one-sided business, and I'll jist let him give me all his money, and that'll put all his wild sportin' notions out of his head."

"Will you stand it, daddy?" asked Simon, by way of waking the old man up. "You mought as well, for the whippin' won't do you no good; and as for Bunch, nobody about the plantation won't ride him but me."

"Simon," replied the old man, "I agree to it. Your old daddy is in a close place about payin' for his land; and this here money—it's jist eleven dollars, lacking of twenty-five cents—will help out mightily. But mind, Simon, ef anything's said about this hereafter, remember, you give me the money."

"Very well, daddy; and ef the thing works up instid o' down, I s'pose we'll say you give me Bunch, eh?"

"You won't never be troubled to tell how you come by Bunch; the thing's agin nater, and can't be done. What old Jed'diah Suggs knows, he knows as good as anybody. Give me them fix-ments, Simon."

Our hero handed the cards to his father, who, dropping the plow-line with which he had intended to tie Simon's hands, turned his back to that individual, in order to prevent his witnessing the operation of mixing. He then sat down, and very leisurely commenced shuffling the cards, making, however, an exceedingly awkward job of it. Restive kings and queens jumped from his hands, or obstinately refused to slide into the company of the rest of the pack. Occasionally a sprightly knave would insist on facing his neighbor; or, pressing his edge against another's, half double himself up, and then skip away. But Elder Jed'diah perseveringly continued his attempts to subdue the refractory, while heavy drops burst from his forehead, and ran down his cheeks. All of a sudden an idea, quick and penetrating as a rifle-ball, seemed to have entered the cranium of the old man. He chuckled audibly. The devil had suggested to Mr. Suggs an impromptu "stock," which would place the chances of Simon, already sufficiently slim in the old man's opinion, without the range of possibility. Mr. Suggs forthwith proceeded to cut all the picter ones, so as to be certain to include the Jacks, and place them at the bottom, with the evident intention of keeping Simon's fingers above these when he should cut. Our hero, who was quietly looking over his father's shoulders all the time, did not seem alarmed by this disposition of the cards; on the contrary, he smiled, as if he felt perfectly confident of success, in spite of it.

"Now, daddy," said Simon, when his father had announced himself ready, "narry one of us ain't got to look at the cards, while I'm a-cuttin'; if we do, it'll spile the conjuration."

"Very well."

"And another thing: you've got to look me right dead in the eye, daddy; will you?"

"To be sure,—to be sure," said Mr. Suggs; "fire away."

Simon walked up close to his father, and placed his hand on the pack. Old Mr. Suggs looked in Simon's eye, and Simon returned the look for about three seconds, during which a close observer might have detected a suspicious working of the wrist of the hand on the cards, but the elder Suggs did not remark it.

"Wake snakes! day's a-breakin'! Rise, Jack!" said Simon, cutting half a dozen cards from the top of the pack, and presenting the face of the bottom one for the inspection of his father.

It was the Jack of hearts!

Old Mr. Suggs staggered back several steps, with uplifted eyes and hands!

"Marciful master!" he exclaimed, "ef the boy hain't! Well, how in the round creation of the—! Ben, did you ever? To be sure and sartain, Satan has power on this yearth!" and Mr. Suggs groaned in very bitterness.

"You never seed nothin' like that in Augusty, did ye, daddy?" asked Simon, with a malicious wink at Ben.

"Simon, how did you do it?" queried the old man, without noticing his son's question.

"Do it, daddy? Do it? 'Tain't nothin'. I done it jist as easy as—shootin'."

Whether this explanation was entirely, or in any degree, satisfactory to the perplexed mind of Elder Jed'diah Suggs can not, after the lapse of the time which has intervened, be sufficiently ascertained. It is certain, however, that he pressed the investigation no farther, but merely requested his son Benjamin to witness the fact that, in consideration of his love and affection for his son Simon, and in order to furnish the donee with the means of leaving that portion of the State of Georgia, he bestowed upon him the impracticable pony, Bunch.

"Jist so, daddy; jist so; I'll witness that. But it 'minds me mightily of the way mammy give old Trailler the side of bacon last week. She a-sweepin' up the h'a'th; the meat on the table; old Trailler jumps up, gethers the bacon, and darts! Mammy arter him with the broom-stick as fur as the door, but seein' the dog has got the start, she shakes the stick at him, and hollers, 'You sassy, aigsukkin', roguish, gnatty, flop-eared varmint! take it along! take it along! I only wish 'twas full of a'snic, and ox-vomit, and blue vitrul, so as 'twould cut your interls into chitlins!' That's about the way you give Bunch to Simon."

"Oh, shuh, Ben," remarked Simon, "I wouldn't run on that way. Daddy couldn't help it; it was predestinated: 'Whom he hath, he will,' you know," and the rascal pulled down the under lid of his left eye at his brother. Then addressing his father, he asked, "War'n't it, daddy?"

"To be sure—to be sure—all fixed aforehand," was old Mr. Suggs' reply.

"Didn't I tell you so, Ben?" said Simon. "I knowed it was all fixed aforehand," and he laughed until he was purple in the face.

"What's in ye? What are ye laughin' about?" asked the old man wrothily.

"Oh, it's so funny that it could all 'a' been fixed aforehand!" said Simon, and laughed louder than before. The obtusity of the Reverend Mr. Suggs, however, prevented his making any discoveries. He fell into a brown study, and no further allusion was made to the matter.

It was evident to our hero that his father intended he should remain but one more night beneath the paternal roof. What mattered it to Simon?

He went home at night; curried and fed Bunch; whispered confidentially in his ear that he was the "fastest piece of hossflesh, accordin' to size, that ever shaded the yearth;" and then busied himself in preparing for an early start on the morrow.

Old Mr. Suggs' big red rooster had hardly ceased crowing in announcement of the coming dawn, when Simon mounted the intractable Bunch. Both were in high spirits: our hero at the idea of unrestrained license in future; and Bunch from a mesmerical transmission to himself of a portion of his master's deviltry. Simon raised himself in the stirrups, yelled a tolerably fair imitation of the Creek war-whoop, and shouted:

"I'm off, old stud! Remember the Jack-a-hearts!"

Bunch shook his little head, tucked down his tail, ran sideways, as if going to fall, and then suddenly reared, squealed, and struck off at a brisk gallop.