when it comes to river drivin'."

"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin'
their own business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley,
as she speared a soda-biscuit with her fork.

"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded
her husband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what
you are,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd
ought, as a Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right
track, though it's always a turrible risky thing to do."

Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger
generation, sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and sometimes "Old
Kennebec," because of the frequency with which these words
appeared in his conversation. There were not wanting those of
late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too obvious to
mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless
life, he had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line
between fact and fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an
extent that he almost staggered himself when he began to indulge
in reminiscence. He was a feature of the Edgewood "drive," being
always present during the five or six days that it was in
progress, sometimes sitting on the river-bank, sometimes leaning
over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the butt-end of a
huge log, but always chewing tobacco and expectorating to
incredible distances as he criticized and damned impartially all
the expedients in use at the particular moment.

"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose.