I.

IN days which are called old times, although half of the people who lived then still live, there were no railways west of the Alleghanies nor any telegraphs anywhere, yet there were everywhere mysterious channels through which passed from the East to the West nearly every thing by which the heart of one man might gladden that of another. And so it came to pass that many years ago there was wafted from the farther shore of the Atlantic, across the mountains, along the lonesome rivers, through dense forests in which even wild beasts might lose themselves and over broad stretches of prai

rie in whose trackless wastes men were often lost, the English story which has caused more hearty merriment than all other humorous tales ever written. It passed unharmed by many a fever-haunt like unto its author's own "New Eden," then along on the edge of a black swamp, up a doleful looking little creek, across a bit of dry ground, up a little hill and into purer air, and finally into the hands and heart of old Wesley Berryman, owner of one of the stores in the village of Blackelsville. Old Wesley, sometimes called "Uncle," but frequently designated by appellations not so respectful,

was a Methodist class-leader as well as a storekeeper; he was reputed a "close-fisted" man and the owner of the dismalest collec

tion of religious books in that section of the country. Of late, however, men had seen him laughing a great deal as he read at his store door-step when no customers were by, and they feared-or hoped that the old man was losing his mind. Finally, on a bright November morning, old Wesley walked, with a gait adapted about equally from the penitent and the sneak, down the main street and to the creek, carrying a paint-pot and brush; two hours later the town was shaken, almost as by a severe ague, by the information that old Wesley's new flatboat had a name painted on it, and it wasn't done in tar, either, as was the usual way, but with good black paint and on a surface smoothed for the purpose.

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Must be after somebody that's just died, then," suggested old Mrs. Longhouse, who was the first recipient of the news from the fisherman who had brought it from the creek. 66 Somebody who's just died, and that the old man has come it over in a trade some way, mark my words. What did ye say the name wuz, George?”

"Sam Weller," replied the fisherman, "I wuz askin' the fellers 'round the saw-mill if they knowed any such person, but they didn't. I don't remember the name about these parts."

"Nuther do I," said the old lady, "and I was born-well, 'twa'nt last year any how," she continued diplomatically, after almost committing the most unwomanly indiscre

tion of revealing her age. "Mebbe he was some of the old man's wife's folks," said Mrs. Longhouse, gazing fixedly into the foliage of a great oak as if it were the Berryman genealogical tree; "they say she brought him his money, an' there wuz some trouble about gettin' it. Any how, the old man ain't used up good paint that way onless ther's somethin' on his mind-mark my words, George."

"Just what I say, Miss Longhouse," replied the fisherman, and the remaining vil lagers agreed with the couple.

As for the craft whose name had been the cause of so much curiosity, she was typical of the country in which she was built broad, rough, unsightly, but extremely useful. She was simply an enormous oblong box, with no interior space but what was useful for stowage purposes. Her bare ground constituted the "ways" upon which she was built, and the ceremony of launching was conducted solely by nature, for the November rains expanded the little creek until its waters reached the boat and lifted, it. Nature also supplied its motive power, for it was expected to move only by floating with the currents of such streams as it drifted into. It had a long oar aft, and one on each side amidships, but these were merely to be used when it was necessary to change the boat's course, never to increase her speed. Her cabin was merely an unoccupied end of the boat, being separated from the stowage space only by a wall of corn in bags. The furniture, though not elegant, was sufficient; upon each side were two bunks, and against the wall of corn sacks was another, and these five beds accommodated the entire crew and its single officer. A plain wooden table stood in front of the officer's bunk, this latter being by day a seat, and against the broader wall of the boat reposed a brick fire-place and chimney. The walls were ornamented with culinary utensils, and about the floor, out of the ordinary center, were ranged the principal portion of the commissary stores.

"I reckon old Uncle Berryman 'll be sendin' his boat off pretty soon," suggested one villager to another after they had exchanged greetings and disposed of the weather.

He's got that name on her, and he wouldn't have done that till the last minute, so's to save the interest on the cost of the paint."

The speaker's supposition was correct, whether or no its basis were sound. The Sam Weller had been raised from the ground by the swelling of the creek, her moistened planking closed its seams, she was pumped dry, her cargo, consisting of barrels of pork and sacks of corn, was put on board, and quite a number of loafers had stood idly about for several days so as to be ready to enjoy to the full the excitement of seeing the Sam Weller drift down the creek, when Deacon Ezra Packsitt, who had several months before been engaged as captain, pilot, mate and clerk, carried dismay and an anxious face into Uncle Berryman's store by stating that two of the crew had failed him at the last instant. One of them had gone no one knew where, upon a final spree in anticipation of several weeks of the correct habits which Deacon Packsitt always exacted from his crew, and the other had broken a leg while working in a “clearing."

"I had that drunken Sam Pyger on my mind, too," said the Deacon mournfully; "I'd meant to git him under conviction, anyhow, on this trip, while he was away from his old friends, and maybe, the good Lord willin', git him converted before he got back home."

had, so the Deacon speedily recovered his business temper, and remarked:

"Oh, yes; there's plenty that need it as bad, but there ain't as likely soil in 'em to 1 work on. They ain't got the head-piece to understand the doctrines. How much shall I offer to pay?"

"Oh, Deacon," said the storekeeper, "there you go again on the wrong track. You're always expectin' people to git religion through their heads. I got mine through my heart, in the twinklin' of an eye, glory to God! an' so can anybody else ef they believe. I don't think I'd offer more'n twenty-five dollars. I know thirty's the regular price, but flatboats are skeerce this winter, an' there must be lots of fellows waitin' to go to Orleans."

"There's plenty that want to go," replied the Deacon, "but they ain't them that I'd take. Now there's Emory Rickins's boyhe's old enough an' strong enough, but let him once get to New Orleans, an' he'd go to the devil faster'n he ever rode a hoss in a scrub race. I heerd him talkin' about wantin' to go-it must have been the beginnin' of the season-an' he said he'd be glad to go for nothin', just to see Orleans."

"Why, git him, then!" exclaimed the storekeeper, straightening himself at once. “I never had such a chance but once in my life before-I'd be just that much ahead."

The Deacon straightened too. "I can't do it, Mr. Berryman. I don't mean to have the loss of that boy's soul laid on me."

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The storekeeper turned toward a shelf of Bibles, and then turned rapidly back again. "Deacon Packsitt," said he, "taint resk, at all. Whether a man standeth or falleth, he does it unto himself. That's good Scripture doctrine, I b'leeve? If a man falls, its his own sin; it ain't goin' to be laid onto any flatboat pilot-no, nor any flatboat owner, neither."

"Yes, that's good doctrine," admitted the Deacon after a moment of hesitation, "but if a man falls because somebody else puts a stumblin' block in his way, I reckon it isn't the fault of the man that falls, partickkilarly if the stumblin' block that's stuck out is as big as the hull city of New Orleans. Besides," continued the Deacon,

"nobody ever could keep that boy from gittin' drunk just when he's a mind to, an' if he happened to git too much aboard when 'twas his turn on deck, an' he let her run her head on an island, there'd be the whole cargo spiled if the river should fall. You know I always was down on takin' drinkin' men onto crews--taint ever safe."

"That's so, Deacon," said the storekeeper, who had slowly resumed his listless position, " you always was safe—as you orf to be. But I kind o' think you dodged the subject of who'd be to blame if the boy went to the bad. I'll have that out with you, sometime; I've got the apostle Paul on my side, so I'm sure to beat you. But who can we get? Why-I declare!-how could I have forgot! There's old Lugwine, down in the Bottoms; he was beggin' me to let him go, but 'twas after the hands war all engaged; he said he wanted to go so's to cut an' bring back a hundred or two fishpoles,* that he thought he could get a quarter apiece for. He ought to be willin' to take twenty-five, yes, twenty dollars, an' even fifteen, for the chance of makin' money on a lot of fishpoles. An' he's never, been gathered into the ark of safety, not he. There's your chance, Deacon."

"Well, yes," said the Deacon. "He isn't much of a man, but he'll do on a pinch. I don't know about convertin' them Bottom chaps, though; their dogs has got more sense, an' just about as much religion."

"You wouldn't talk so dismal about 'em if you was a Methodist instead of a Presbyterian, Deacon," said the storekeeper with

animation. "The grace of God can find its way into the meanest heart, bless the Lord! Once I didn't think any more about religion than a Bottom feller, an' now look at me."

It was perhaps unconsciously that the storekeeper dropped his eyes as he concluded this speech, so that when the Deacon complied with his employer's request, the face of the latter was so nearly invisible that the Deacon could see little but a dull scalp insufficiently covered with dingy gray hair. It was better that it should be so, however, for the Deacon's peculiar gaze might not

American bamboo, which grows very large in the swamps of the Lower Mississippi.

have fully pleased his employer. Suddenly the storekeeper raised his head and remarked:

"Well, old Lugwine's one, any how; it would be burying my Lord's talent instead of putting it to usury, if I lost him when there's a chance of gettin' him so cheap. You'd better go see him right off, while I look up somebody else; if I can find somebody with a soul to be saved, I'll do it, even though you an' me don't agree on how it ort to be done."

The Bottom, in which Deacon Packsitt was to find old Lugwine, had the reputation of being a hard place. Everything about it was hard, except the soil; this, as if to counterbalance the general hardness of the Bottom, was soft and yielding. Grass never grew under the trees in the Bottom, and prostrate trunks turned black and exuded ooze. The houses in the Bottom were small, and of logs; each of them consisted of a single room, the door of which was frequently the only window and was occasionally the chimney also. Furniture, except frying-pan, axe and gun, was almost unknown in the Bottom.

The inhabitants of the Bottom were in one sense aristocrats-they despised labor, and they persistently abstained from doing any. They would sit upon door-steps or the bank of the creek, but never as laborers in the market place. A Bottomite would occasionally fish, or chase a deer, or shoot a wild turkey, or cut down a hollow tree with the hope of finding honey therein, but all such efforts were classified as sports. In dress, also, the inhabitants of the Bottom were aristocrats, in that they were guilty of no servile imitation of each other. Each wore garments peculiar to himself, and which seldom or never gave place to those prescribed by tyrannical fashion. In matters of education, too, they were aristocratic; their pride in the ignorance of their children was, if not so poetically expressed as that of the aged Douglas, at least asserted by deeds the import of which could not be mistaken. While the county authorities were building a school house among them, the Bottomites declined even to sit upon its timbers, and when the building was com

pleted, they quietly burned it to the ground. They were not annoyed to learn that the school house had been paid for by taxation in the county, for no Bottomite was ever known to pay taxes.

In religion, every man in the Bottom was a priest unto himself. The women occasionally exhibited sentimental weakness on the subject of preaching, and the men allowed them to do so that was all. Old Elder Hobbedowker rode over to the Bottom one Sunday to smite the inhabitants with the sword of the Spirit, and walked home after service, his horse having disappeared, never to return. Then young English, a meek-eyed Episcopalian, read the beautiful service of his Church in the Bottom, with no responses except from a somnolent male or two. Brother Rungtite, the circuit rider, went to them as an ambassador bearing a message from his great King, but when he took from his pocket some neatly folded pieces of paper on which he had made notes from which to speak, the inhabitants took him for a deputy sheriff in disguise, and those who did not precipitately retire arose and cast him from their midst.

Consistent as the inhabitants of the Bottom strove to be, they were human, and they departed so far from their principles as to plant corn. For this offense against their unwritten creed they were not to be condemned severely, for the influence upon their lives of the beautiful cereal was almost as great as that of fate itself. Unlike other sorts of labor, the planting of corn was almost pleasurable. The ground was first prepared by a plow, and the horse (borrowed) who drew this implement always drew also the greater portion of the weight of the lord of the manor, as he followed in the furrow. The planting of the corn was done by the assistance of the neighbors, and offered nearly as many opportunities for conversation and conviviality as did perfect leisure. As the corn grew and waxed tall, the field formed for the inebriate Bottomite a perfect refuge from the reproachful eyes of his wife, or from the minions of the law who had frequent occasion to visit the Bottom; for a walk of a few steps into its leafy coverts would secrete a man as securely as a weari