now; come and help me."

The men from the clearing, who understood the river, took our horses,
rode up to the sulky, and after some difficulty succeeded in bringing
the traveler safe to shore. Then we recognized him as the worthy parson,
who had played for us at a puppet show in Little Rock.

"You have had a narrow escape," said we.

"I found that out an hour ago," he said. "I have been fiddling to the
fishes all the time, and played everything I can play without notes."

[Illustration: THE PARSON FIDDLED]

"What made you think of fiddling in the time of such peril?" he was
asked.

"I have found in my progress through life," said he, "that there is
nothing so well calculated to draw people together as the sound of a
fiddle. I might bawl for help till I was hoarse, and no one would stir a
peg, but as soon as people hear the scraping of a fiddle, they will quit
all other business and come to the spot in flocks."

We laughed heartily at the knowledge the parson showed of human nature;
and he was right.

WE PLAN A RIVER TRIP[1]

[Footnote 1: This selection, with _On Comic Songs_, which follows, is
taken from _Three Men in a Boat_, by Jerome K. Jerome The complete title
of the book is _Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog_)]

_By_ JEROME K. JEROME

There were four of us--George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself,
and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking and talking about
how bad we were--bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it.
Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him
at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said
that _he_ had fits of giddiness, too, and hardly knew what he was doing.
With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver
that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent
liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by
which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine
advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am
suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with, in its most
virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly
with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment