wot woz comin'," said Dan, "but about midnight I seemed to
hear hail onto the roof, and a shower of rocks and stones like to a
blast started in the canyon. When I got up and struck a light, thar was
suthin' like onto a cord o' kindlin' wood and splinters whar she'd
stood asleep, and a hole in the side o' the shanty, and--no Jinny!
Lookin' at them hoofs o' hern--and mighty porty they is to look at,
too--you would allow she could do it!" I fear that this performance
laid the foundation of her later infelicitous reputation, and perhaps
awakened in her youthful breast a misplaced ambition, and an emulation
which might at that time have been diverted into a nobler channel. For
the fame of this juvenile performance--and its possible promise in the
future--brought at once upon her the dangerous flattery and attention
of the whole camp. Under intelligently directed provocation she would
repeat her misguided exercise, until most of the scanty furniture of
the cabin was reduced to a hopeless wreck, and sprains and callosities
were developed upon the limbs of her admirers. Yet even at this early
stage of her history, that penetrating intellect which was in after
years her dominant quality was evident to all. She could not be made
to kick at quartz tailings, at a barrel of Boston crackers, or at the
head or shin of "Nigger Pete." An artistic discrimination economized
her surplus energy. "Ef you'll notiss," said Dan, with a large
parental softness, "she never lets herself out to onst like them mules
or any jackass ez I've heerd of, but kinder holds herself in, and, so
to speak, takes her bearings--sorter feels round gently with that off
foot, takes her distance and her rest, and then with that ar' foot
hoverin' round in the air softly, like an angel's wing, and a gentle,
dreamy kind o' look in them eyes, she lites out! Don't ye, Jinny?
Thar! jist ez I told ye," continued Dan, with an artist's noble
forgetfulness of self, as he slowly crawled from the splintered ruin of
the barrel on which he had been sitting. "Thur! did ye ever see the
like! Did ye dream that all the while I was talkin' she was a
meditatin' that?"

The same artistic perception and noble reticence distinguished her
bray. It was one of which a less sagacious animal would have been
foolishly vain or ostentatiously prodigal. It was a contralto of great
compass and profundity--reaching from low G to high C--perhaps a trifle
stronger in the lower register, an