size, color,
and strength. Always on catching his first glimpse of them, where side
by side they sat on the topmost rail of the fence, Mish-mugwa would cut
short his singing and send forward his wonted salutation, "I yi, you
dogs!" Not failing at such times to discover that old "Corny" was
sweating and would like to blow awhile, our black Cincinnatus would run
his plow into a shady corner, and, likewise taking his seat on the
fence, square himself for a little edifying conversation.

These visits were the white spots in the day to Burl. Apart from the
pretext they gave him of resting from his work, they afforded him an
opportunity of airing his achievements as a hunter, and his exploits as
a warrior--_i.e._, of hearing himself talk. As the young Indian
understood not a word of what was said to him, he had but to sit and
listen, which he would do with grave and decorous attention, composedly
smoking his pipe the while, with his bright eyes fixed on the distant
green or blue before him. Once fairly going on this strain, the Fighting
Nigger would never stop until he had made a squeezed lemon of every red
"varmint" whose "top-knot" he had to show for proof and trophy of his
prowess, winding up with a careful enumeration of all the scalps he had
ever taken, telling them slowly off on his fingers, that his Indian
guest might take a note of it, if so minded. Often, before our big black
Munchausen had blown his fill, our little white Munchausen, fired by the
illustrious example of his pattern, would come gallantly dashing in, to
give his exploits and achievements a little airing likewise. He had
caught with alarming aptitude his pattern's inventiveness and proneness
to exaggeration; so that, before letting them go, his dogs and cats were
sure to swell into wolves and panthers, his garter-snakes into
rattlesnakes, his bellowing bull-frogs into roaring buffalo-bulls, and
his white calves, seen in the dark, into "ghostises." Nor was Burl
unwilling to listen; for, though so fond of talking himself, and so good
a talker too, he was one of the best listeners in the world. This trait
will seem the more commendable in our hero when we reflect how rarely we
find the good talker and the good listener conjoined--more rarely,
indeed, than the good talker and the exemplar of every Christian virtue;
so rarely, in fact, that we marvel so few of the good talkers have made
the discovery for themselves. So to those sallies of his "little man"
B