her heart to labour with a reveille of song.
Her folks hev robbed an' left her but her faith in goodness grows,
She hasn't any larnin', but I tell ye Bill, she knows!

She's hed her share o' troubles; I remember well the day
We took her t' the poorhouse--she was singin' all the way;
Ye needn't be afraid t' come where stormy Jordan flows,
If all the larnin' ye can git has taught ye halfshe knows.'

I give this crude example of rustic philosophy, not because it has my
endorsement--God knows I have ever felt it far beyond me--but because it
is useful to those who may care to know the man who wrote it. I give it
the poor fame of these pages with keen regret that my friend is now long
passed the praise or blame of this world.

Chapter 22

The horse played a part of no small importance in that country. He was
the coin of the realm, a medium of exchange, a standard of value, an
exponent of moral character. The man that travelled without a horse was
on his way to the poorhouse. Uncle Eb or David Brower could tell a good
horse by the sound of his footsteps, and they brought into St Lawrence
County the haughty Morgans from Vermont. There was more pride in their
high heads than in any of the good people. A Northern Yankee who was not
carried away with a fine horse had excellent self-control. Politics and
the steed were the only things that ever woke him to enthusiasm, and
there a man was known as he traded. Uncle Eb used to say that one
ought always to underestimate his horse 'a leetle fer the sake of a
reputation'.

We needed another horse to help with the haying, and Bob Dean, a tricky
trader, who had heard of it, drove in after supper one evening, and
offered a rangy brown animal at a low figure. We looked him over, tried
him up and down the road, and then David, with some shrewd suspicion,
as I divined later, said I could do as I pleased. I bought the horse and
led him proudly to the stable. Next morning an Irishman, the extra man
for the haying, came in with a worried look to breakfast.

'That new horse has a chittern' kind of a coff,' he said.

'A cough?' said I.

''Tain't jist a coff, nayther,' he said, 'but a kind of toom!'

With the last word he obligingly imitated the sound of the cough. It
threw me into perspiration.

'Sounds bad,' said Uncle Eb, as he looked at me and snickered.

''Fraid Bill ain't much of a jockey,' said David, smiling.

'Got a grand appetite--that hoss has,' said Tip Ta