ry as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin,
the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of
transition, contrived to arrange their hair and dress to a degree
which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they
had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being
reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, for not "slick'n' his ha'r,
and wash'n' and fix'n' up, afore hay'n' his pictur' taken;" but the
old fellow was obdurate, and joined me in remonstrance against this
transformation to the commonplace, on the part of his women-folk.
However, there was no profit in arguing with them, and I took my
snap-shot with a conviction that the film was being wasted.

We were in several small towns to-day, in pursuance of the policy of
distributing our shopping, so as to see as much of the shore life as
practicable. Chief among them have been New Matamoras (141 miles) and
St. Mary's (154 miles), in West Virginia, and Newport, in Ohio (155
miles). Rather dingy villages, these--each, after their kind, with a
stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flouring mill at the head of
the landing; a few cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and men
lounging about with that air of comfortable idling which impresses one
as the main characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody seems ever
to have anything to do; a ferry running to the opposite shore--for
cattle and wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to drift with
the current; and for foot passengers, a lumbering skiff, with oars
chucking noisily in their roomy locks.

Every now and then we run across bunches of oil and gas wells;
and great signs, like those advertising boards which greet railway
travelers approaching our large cities, are here and there perched
upon the banks, notifying steamboat pilots, in letters a foot
high, that a pipe line here crosses the river, the vicinity being
consequently unsafe for mooring.

Our camp, to-night, is on a bit of grassy ledge at the summit of a
rocky bank, ten miles above Marietta, on the Ohio side. A rod or so
back of us is the country road, which winds along at the foot of
a precipitous steep. It is narrow quarters here, and too near the
highway for comfort, but nothing better seemed to offer at the time we
needed it; and the outlook is pleasant, through the fringing oaks and
elms, across the broad river into West Virginia.

We had not yet pitched tent, and all hands were still clambering over