laurels and let out the job.


CHAPTER II.

_Upon a time._--This is not a fairy tale, though it opens in a very
suspicious manner. It is a sad recital of facts. Upon a time does not
mean that any one sat down on a watch, or made himself familiar with the
town clock. It is not very specific, I admit. It may refer to any time,
but, I think, the design was to call attention to Benedict's time. You
know how it is yourself. You remember how often you have stood on a
dock, and seen the steamboat ten feet out in the stream, or have struck
a depot just as the train was rolling around a curve in the distance,
simply because you were not upon a time. Then, as you walked on the dock
or platform, you would strew your pathway with--curses. But I do not
mean anything of that sort. No, I refer to something grander, nobler,
more magnificent.


CHAPTER III.

_There was._--Here's explicitness! Here's directness! Here's
explanatoryness! In my pap days I learned that without a verb there
could not be a sentence, not even a judge's sentence. I know "was" ain't
much of a word all alone by itself, but then chuck it in among a lot of
other fellows, and how it does make them stand around. And then it's so
deliciously incomprehensible--there was. Mind you, it don't say that the
same thing isn't now. And, mind you, it don't say whether it refers to
the day before yesterday, or the commencement of the Franco-Prussian
opera bouffe, or our late unpleasantness, or the beginning of the world,