m of more'n two hundred acres, but the land is all
run down--he can't raise nothin' on it hardly, it needs enrichin' so; he
hain't no stock, and, as he often sez, 'If I should run in debt for 'em,
we should soon be landed in the Poor-House.' He's got a wife and seven
boys.

"Wall, now if he could only borry 2000 dollars of Uncle Sam, and only
pay forty dollars a year for it--why, they would be jest made.

"They could put on twenty young cows on the place, two good horses, and
go right on to success, for Jim is hard-workin', and Mahala Widrig is
one of the best hard-workin' wimmen in the precincks of Jonesville, and
I don't believe she has got a second dress to her back."

The Governor murmured sunthin' about a engagement he had. He looked
worried and anxious, but I and my Gardeen Angel hadn't no idee of
lettin' him go while there wuz a chance for us to plead for the Right.

And I hastened to say, "Uncle Sam needn't be 'fraid of lendin' money on
that farm, for it is there solid, clear down to China; it can't run
away."

The Governor kinder moved off a little, as if meditatin' flight, and I
spoke up some louder, bein' determined to do all I could for Mahala
Widrig--good, honest, hard-workin' creeter.

Sez I, "It will be the makin' of Jim Widrigses folks and more'n fifty
others right there round Jonesville, to say nothin' about the hull of
the United States; and it will be money in Uncle Sam's pocket, too, in
the end, and he will own up to me that it is."

The Governor here took out his watch and looked at it almost onbeknown
to me, I wuz so took up a-talkin' for Justice and Mahala.

[Illustration: The Governor took out his watch.]

Sez I, "This bill will bring money into Uncle Samuel's pocket in the
end, for it will keep the boys to hum on the old farm." Sez I, "It is
Poverty that has driv the boys off--hard work, high taxes, and ruinous
mortgages drives to the city lots of 'em, to add to the pauper and
criminal classes--boys that Uncle Sam might have kep to hum by the means
I speak of, to grow up into sober, respectable, prosperous citizens, a
strength and a safeguard to the Republic, but whom he now will have to
support in prisons and almshouses, a danger and menace to the Goverment.

"Poor Uncle Sam!--poor, well-meanin', but oft misguided old creeter! It
would be easier for him, if he only knew it, to do what Mr. Stanford
wanted him to.

"Besides, think of the masses of fosterin' crime he would be a-pressin