-viewer, or
sunthin' or another of that kind, you are her man: but she has got the
wrong cow by the tail this time. I never hear of a patron, I don't think
of a frolic I once had with a cow's tail; and, by hanging on to it like
a snappin' turtle, I jist saved my life, that's a fact.

"Tell you what it is, Squire, take a fool's advice, for once. Here you
are; I have made you considerable well-known, that's a fact; and will
introduce you to court, to king and queen, or any body you please. For
our legation, though they can't dance, p'raps, as well as the French one
can, could set all Europe a dancin' in wide awake airnest, if it chose.
They darsent refuse us nothin', or we would fust embargo, and then go
to war. Any one you want to know, I'll give you the ticket. Look round,
select a good critter, and hold on to the tail, for dear life, and see
if you hante a patron, worth havin'. You don't want none yourself, but
you might want one some time or another, for them that's a comin' arter
you.

"When I was a half grow'd lad, the bears came down from Nor-West one
year in droves, as a body might say, and our woods near Slickville was
jist full of 'em. It warn't safe to go a-wanderin' about there a-doin'
of nothin', I tell _you_. Well, one arternoon, father sends me into the
back pastur', to bring home the cows, 'And,' says he, 'keep a stirrin',
Sam, go ahead right away, and be out of the bushes afore sun-set, on
account of the bears, for that's about the varmints' supper-time.'

"Well, I looks to the sky, and I sees it was a considerable of a piece
yet to daylight down, so I begins to pick strawberries as I goes along,
and you never see any thing so thick as they were, and wherever
the grass was long, they'd stand up like a little bush, and hang in
clusters, most as big and twice as good, to my likin', as garden ones.
Well, the sun, it appears to me, is like a hoss, when it comes near dark
it mends its pace, and gets on like smoke, so afore I know'd where I
was, twilight had come peepin' over the spruce tops.

"Off I sot, hot foot, into the bushes, arter the cows, and as always
eventuates when you are in a hurry, they was further back than common
that time, away ever so fur back to a brook, clean off to the rear of
the farm, so that day was gone afore I got out of the woods, and I got
proper frightened. Every noise I heerd I thought it was a bear, and when
I looked round a one side, I guessed I heerd one on the other, and I