red
from a window, and, much to my relief, called off the animals.
Satisfied, apparently, that I was not the visitor he expected, the
fellow lounged out and sat upon the steps, where I joined him. He was
a tall, raw-boned, loose-jointed young man, with a dirty, buttonless
flannel shirt which revealed a hairy breast; upon his trousers hung a
variety of patches, in many stages of grease and decrepitude; a gray
slouch hat shaded his little fishy eyes and hollow, yellow cheeks; and
the snaky ends of his yellow mustache were stiff with accumulations of
dried tobacco juice. His fat, waddling wife, in a greasy black gown,
followed with bare feet, and, arms akimbo, listened in the open door.

A coal company owns the rocky river front, here and at many places
below, and lets these cabins to the poor-white element, so numerous on
the Ohio's banks. The renter is privileged to cultivate whatever land
he can clear on the rocky, precipitous slopes, which is seldom more
than half an acre to the cabin; and he may, if he can afford a cow,
let her run wild in the scrub. The coal vein, a few rods back of the
house, is only a few inches thick, and poor in quality, but is freely
resorted to by the cotters. He worked whenever he could find a job, my
host said--in the coal mines and quarries, or on the bottom farms, or
the railroad which skirts the bank at his feet.

"But I tell ye, sir, th' _I_talians and Hungarians is spoil'n' this
yere country fur white men; 'n' I do'n' see no prospect for hits be'n'
better till they get shoved out uv 't!" Yet he said that life wasn't
so hard here as it was in some parts he had heard tell of--the climate
was mild, that he "'lowed;" a fellow could go out and get a free
bucket of coal from the hillside "back yon;" he might get all the
"light wood 'n' patchin' stuff" he wanted, from the river drift;
could, when he "hankered after 'em," catch fish off his own front-door
yard; and pick up a dollar now and then at odd jobs, when the rent was
to be paid, or the "ol' woman" wanted a dress, or he a new coat.

This is clearly the lazy man's Paradise. I do not remember to have
heard that the South Sea Islanders, in the ante-missionary days, had
an easier time of it than this. What new fortune will befall my friend
when he gets the Italians and Hungarians "shoved out," and "things
pick up a bit," I cannot conceive.

A pleasing panorama he has from his doorway--across the river, the
fertile fields of Round Bottom,