a little
breeze up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at
me very friendly.

I was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook
breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep
sound of "boom!" away up the river. I rouses up, and rests on my elbow
and listens; pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up, and went and
looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying
on the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry. And there was
the ferryboat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was
the matter now. "Boom!" I see the white smoke squirt out of the
ferryboat's side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water,
trying to make my carcass come to the top.

I was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire,
because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the
cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide
there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so I was having
a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a
bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put
quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always
go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep
a lookout, and if any of them's floating around after me I'll give
them a show. I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what
luck I could have, and I warn't disappointed. A big double loaf come
along, and I most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and
she floated out further. Of course I was where the current set in the
closest to the shore--I knowed enough for that. But by and by along
comes another one, and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook
out the little dab of quicksilver, and set my teeth in. It was
"baker's bread"--what the quality eat; none of your low-down
corn-pone.

I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log,
munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well
satisfied. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the
widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me,
and here it has gone and done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is
something in that thing--that is, there's something in it when a body
like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I
reckon it don't work for only just the right kind.

I lit a pipe a