out his fist to strike
me, when a neighbor said, "Don't hit him Cap, he don't know no better,
he's a Yank." "Wall Yank," drawled this six feet of fighting man,
"seein' ye don't know no better, I'll let ye off this time; but I
don't keep no tarvern, and when me and my family come yure way, we'll
all stop with yew, that'll even it up." As I looked at the fifty
yawning caverns of chewing mouths, and reflected upon the cost of
feeding them in Boston for even one day, I thanked God that I had not
given him my card, and we rode away amid ear-splitting cheers and
waving of hands, each one of which resembled in size the tail-board of
a coal-cart.

On another occasion while scouring the Florida country for lands for
colonizing purposes in company with a native, the night caught us in
the dense forest; our horses stumbled over immense fallen trees, the
owls hooted, the wild cats screamed, the thunder roared, occasionally
a pine fell splintered by the lightning, the rain fell in torrents,
and we seemed destined to shiver all the long black hours supperless
and comfortless, when our eyes were greeted by the cheerful light
shining through the open door of a log hut; a dozen curs gave tongue
and went for our legs till a sharp yell from within sent them yelping
away. A genuine Cracker appeared, and seeing our dripping forms in the
electric flash, he quietly said, "Lite strangers, lite, jest in time,
plenty of hog and hominy." He led our tired steeds into the leanto,
fed them, and ushered us into his one-room shanty, where his lank wife
and a dozen children silently made room for us around a rough board
table. "Mother," said the master, "more hoe-cake, more bacon," and
the obedient woman "slapped" a lot of corn dough on to the blade of
a common hoe which a girl held over the "fat-wood" fire until it
browned; another tossed some smoked hog into an suspicious looking
skillet, and soon, in spite of the slovenly cooking, we "fell to" in
a desperate attempt to smother the gnawing pangs of a long-suffering
appetite. Then we told all the stories we could recall or invent to
satisfy the starving intellects of these lonesome denizens of the
wild wood. "Come, chilluns, to bed," said our host, and they were all
stacked one over the other on the one corn-shuck couch where a chorus
of snores proved they were in the land of dreams.

Our host relapsed into silence and seemed to be pondering some
profound problem in his mind; but suddenly blurted ou