eard of no more, and
Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap
left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his
troubles; so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm
didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell
overboard; and that was how I come to be here. So they said I could
have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most daylight
and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I
waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was.
So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up
I says:

"Can you spell, Buck?"

"Yes," he says.

"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.

"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.

"All right," says I, "go ahead."

"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n--there now," he says.

"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't
no slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying."

I set it down, private, because somebody might want _me_ to spell it
next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was
used to it. It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too.
I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and
had so much style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor
a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the
same as houses in town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign
of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a
big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept
clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another
brick; sometimes they wash them over with red water-paint that they
call Spanish-brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass
dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. There was a clock on the
middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the
bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it
for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. It was
beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these
peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape,
she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got
tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her.

Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock,
made out of something like chalk, and paint