t so much and be
so useless, and he said he would do anything to help me, but the men
were so "down on him." I never saw men so patient with a lad before.
He is a most vexing addition to our party, yet one cannot help laughing
at him. He is not honorable, though. I dare not leave this letter
lying on the table, as he would read it. He writes for two Western
periodicals (at least he says so), and he shows us long pieces of his
published poetry.

In one there are twenty lines copied (as Mr. Kavan has shown me)
without alteration from Paradise Lost; in another there are two stanzas
from Resignation, with only the alteration of "stray" for "dead"; and
he has passed the whole of Bonar's Meeting-place off as his own.
Again, he lent me an essay by himself, called The Function of the
Novelist, which is nothing but a mosaic of unacknowledged quotations.
The men tell me that he has "bragged" to them that on his way here he
took shelter in Mr. Nugent's cabin, found out where he hides his key,
opened his box, and read his letters and MSS. He is a perfect plague
with his ignorance and SELF-sufficiency. The first day after he came
while I was washing up the breakfast things he told me that he intended
to do all the dirty work, so I left the knives and forks in the tub and
asked him to wipe and lay them aside. Two hours afterwards I found
them untouched. Again the men went out hunting, and he said he would
chop the wood for several days' use, and after a few strokes, which
were only successful in chipping off some shavings, he came in and
strummed on the harmonium, leaving me without any wood with which to
make the fire for supper. He talked about his skill with the lasso,
but could not even catch one of our quietest horses. Worse than all,
he does not know one cow from another. Two days ago he lost our milch
cow in driving her in to be milked, and Mr. Kavan lost hours of
valuable time in hunting for her without success. To-day he told us
triumphantly that he had found her, and he was sent out to milk her.
After two hours he returned with a rueful face and a few drops of
whitish fluid in the milk pail, saying that that was all he could get.
On Mr. K. going out, he found, instead of our "calico" cow, a brindled
one that had been dry since the spring! Our cow has gone off to the
wild cattle, and we are looking very grim at Lyman, who says that he
expected he should live on milk. I told him to fill up the four-gallon
kettl