undred thousand dollars, which is an
all-fired lot of money, that it would cover mighty nigh a whole block,
an' that there would be nothin' else in America comin' up to it."

"I'd like to see that town," said Ned.

"Maybe you will some day," said Crockett, "'cause you're young. You
don't know how young you look to me. I heard a lot there, Ned, about
that rich man, Mr. Astor. He got his start as a fur trader. I guess he
was about the biggest fur trader that ever was. He was so active that
all them animals that wore furs on their backs concluded they might as
well give up. I heard one story there about an otter an' a beaver
talkin'. Says the otter to the beaver, when he was tellin' the beaver
good-by after a visit: 'Farewell, I never expect to see you again, my
dear old friend.' 'Don't be too much distressed,' replies the beaver,
'you an' I, old comrade, will soon meet at the hat store.'"

Ned and the Bee-Hunter laughed, and Crockett delved again into his past
life and his experiences in the great city, relatively as great then to
the whole country as it is now.

"I saw a heap of New York," he continued, "an' one of the things I liked
best in it was the theaters. Lad, I saw the great Fanny Kemble play
there, an' she shorely was one of the finest women that ever walked this
troubled earth. I saw her first as Portia in that play of Shakespeare's
called, called, called----"

"'The Merchant of Venice,'" suggested Ned.

"Yes, that's it, 'The Merchant of Venice,' where she was the woman
lawyer. She was fine to see, an' the way she could change her voice an'
looks was clean mirac'lous. If ever I need a lawyer I want her to act
for me. She had me mad, an' then she had me laughin', an' then she had
the water startin' in my eyes. Whatever she wanted me to see I saw, an'
whatever she wanted me to think I thought. An' then, too, she was many
kinds of a woman, different in turn. In fact, Ned, she was just like a
handsome piece of changeable silk--first one color an' then another, but
always clean."

He paused and the others did not interrupt him.

"I don't like cities," he resumed presently. "They crowd me up too much,
but I do like the theater. It makes you see so many things an' so many
kinds of people that you wouldn't have time to see if you had to travel
for 'em. We don't have much chance to travel right now, do we,
Bee-Hunter?"

"A few hundred yards only for our bodies," replied the young
Tennesseean, "but our spirits