," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be down to
the bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."

"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked
his spouse, testily.

"'T ain't me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old
man. "The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up
jest like Rose's jack-straws; I never see 'em so turrible ricked up in
all my exper'ence; an' Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a
jam than Cooper's cow. Turrible sot in his ways, too; can't take a
mite of advice. I was tellin' him how to go to work on that bung that's
formed between the gre't gray rock an' the shore,--the awfullest place
to bung that there is between this an' Biddeford,--and says he: 'Look
here, I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned
if I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no
river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the
Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land
I hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry
an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up
strife. There's some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year
out, as if there wa'n't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije
Dennett's one of 'em, when it comes to river-drivin'."

"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own
business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a
soda biscuit with her fork.

"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded
her husband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you
are,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought,
as a Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right track,
though it's always a turrible risky thing to do." Rose's grandfather was
called, by the irreverent younger generation, sometimes "Turrible Wiley"
and sometimes "Old Kennebec," because of the frequency with which these
words appeared in his conversation. There were not wanting those of late
who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too obvious to mention. After
a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless life, he had, at
seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line between fact and fancy,
and drew on his imagination to such an extent that he almost staggered
himself when he began to indulge in reminiscence. He was a feature of
the Edgewo