phitheater. A horse-power ferry runs over
to the larger village of Rising Sun, its Indiana neighbor. There is
a small general store in Rabbit Hash, with postoffice and paint-shop
attachment, and near by a tobacco warehouse and a blacksmith shop,
with a few cottages scattered at intervals over the bottom. The
postmaster, who is also the storekeeper and painter, greeted me with
joy, as I deposited with him mail-matter bearing eighteen cents' worth
of stamps; for his is one of those offices where the salary is the
value of the stamps cancelled. It is not every day that so liberal a
patron comes along.

"Jemimi! Bill! but guv'm'nt business 's look'n' up--there'll be some
o' th' rest o' us a-want'n this yere off'c', a ter nex' 'lection, I
reck'n'."

It was the blacksmith, who is also the ferryman, who thus bantered the
delighted postmaster,--a broad-faced, big-chested, brown-armed man,
with his neck-muscles standing out like cords, and his mild blue eyes
dancing with fun, this rustic disciple of Tubal Cain. He sat just
without the door, leather apron on, and his red shirt-sleeves rolled
up, playing checkers on an upturned soap-box, with a jolly fat farmer
from the hill-country, whose broad straw hat was cocked on the back
of his bald head. The merry laughter of the two was infectious. The
half-dozen spectators, small farmers whose teams and saddle-horses
were hitched to the postoffice railing, were themselves hilarious
over the game; and a saffron-skinned, hollow-cheeked woman in a blue
sunbonnet, and with a market-basket over her arm, stopped for a moment
at the threshold to look on, and then passed within the store, her
eyes having caught the merriment, although her facial muscles had
apparently lost their power of smiling.

Joining the little company, I found that the farmer was a blundering
player, but made up in fun what he lacked in science. I tried to
ascertain the origin of the name Rabbit Hash, as applied to the
hamlet. Every one had a different opinion, evidently invented on the
spur of the moment, but all "'lowed" that none but the tobacco
agent could tell, and he was off in the country for the day; as for
themselves, they had, they confessed, never thought of it before. It
always had been Rabbit Hash, and like enough would be to the end of
time.

We are on the lookout for Big Bone Creek, wishing to make a side trip
to the famous Big Bone Lick, but among the many openings through the
willows of the Kentucky