avor of Uncle Lot, he generally kept you arguing half an
hour, to prove that you really needed it, and to tell you that he could
not all the while be troubled with helping one body or another, all
which time you might observe him regularly making his preparations to
grant your request, and see, by an odd glimmer of his eye, that he was
preparing to let you hear the "conclusion of the whole matter," which
was, "Well, well--I guess--I'll go, on the _hull_--I 'spose I must, at
least;" so off he would go and work while the day lasted, and then wind
up with a farewell exhortation "not to be a callin' on your neighbors
when you could get along without." If any of Uncle Lot's neighbors were
in any trouble, he was always at hand to tell them that "they shouldn't
a' done so;" that "it was strange they couldn't had more sense;" and
then to close his exhortations by laboring more diligently than any to
bring them out of their difficulties, groaning in spirit, meanwhile,
that folks would make people so much trouble.

"Uncle Lot, father wants to know if you will lend him your hoe to-day,"
says a little boy, making his way across a cornfield.

"Why don't your father use his own hoe?"

"Ours is broke."

"Broke! How came it broke?"

"I broke it yesterday, trying to hit a squirrel."

"What business had you to be hittin' squirrels with a hoe? say!"

"But father wants to borrow yours."

"Why don't you have that mended? It's a great pester to have every body
usin' a body's things."

"Well, I can borrow one some where else, I suppose," says the suppliant.
After the boy has stumbled across the ploughed ground, and is fairly
over the fence, Uncle Lot calls,--

"Halloo, there, you little rascal! what are you goin' off without the
hoe for?"

"I didn't know as you meant to lend it."

"I didn't say I wouldn't, did I? Here, come and take it.--stay, I'll
bring it; and do tell your father not to be a lettin' you hunt squirrels
with his hoes next time."

Uncle Lot's household consisted of Aunt Sally, his wife, and an only son
and daughter; the former, at the time our story begins, was at a
neighboring literary institution. Aunt Sally was precisely as clever, as
easy to be entreated, and kindly in externals, as her helpmate was the
reverse. She was one of those respectable, pleasant old ladies whom you
might often have met on the way to church on a Sunday, equipped with a
great fan and a psalm book, and carrying some dried orange peel