hat we haven't grown much since. But Ollie
was a boy, anyhow; he couldn't have been more than a dozen years
old, and we looked upon him as being a very small boy indeed;
though when folks saw us starting off, some of them seemed to
think that we were as boyish as he, because, they said, it was
such a foolish thing to do; and in some way, I'm sure I don't
know how, boys have got the reputation of always doing foolish
things. "They're three of a kind," said Grandpa Oldberry, as he
watched us weigh anchor; "their parents oughter be sent fer."

Well, it's hard to decide where to begin this true history.
We didn't keep any log on this voyage of the Rattletrap. But I'll
certainly have to go back of the time when Grandpa Oldberry
expressed his opinion; and perhaps I ought to explain how we
happened to be in that particular port. As I said, we--Jack and
I--were pretty big boys, so big that we were off out West and in
business for ourselves, though, after all, that didn't imply that
we were very old, because it was a new country, and everybody was
young; after the election the first fall it was found that the
man who had been chosen for county judge wasn't quite twenty-one
years of age yet, and therefore, of course, couldn't hold office;
and we were obliged to wait three weeks till he had had his
birthday, and then to have a special election and choose him
again. Everybody was young except Grandpa Oldberry and Squire
Poinsett.

But I was trying to account for our being in the port of
Prairie Flower. Jack had a cheese-factory there, and made small
round cheeses. I had a printing-office, and printed a small
square newspaper. In my paper I used to praise Jack's cheeses,
and keep repeating how good they were, so people bought then; and
Jack used, once in a while, to give me a cheese. So we both
managed to live, though I think we sometimes got a little tired
of being men, and wished we were back home, far from thick round
cheeses and thin square newspapers.

One evening in the first week in September, when it was
raining as hard as it could rain, and when the wind was blowing
as hard as it could blow, and was driving empty boxes and
barrels, and old tin pails, and wash-boilers, and castaway hats
and runaway hats and lost hats, and other things across the
prairie before it, Jack came into my office, where I was setting
type (my printer having been blown away, along with the boxes and
the hats), and after he had allowed