is to her like a pond to a crane: she wades round it, going in as
far as she can, and snatches up such small fry as come shoreward
from the middle. In this way lately I have gotten hints of what
is stirring in the vasty deeps of village opinion.

Mrs. Cobb is charged, among other dreadful things, with having
ordered of the town manufacturer a carriage that is to be as fine
as President Taylor's, and with marching into church preceded by
a servant, who bears her prayer-book on a velvet cushion. What
if she rode in Cinderella's coach, or had her prayer-book carried
before her on the back of a Green River turtle? But to her sex
she promises to be an invidious Christian. I am rather disturbed
by the gossip regarding the elder daughter. But this is so conflicting
that one impression is made only to be effaced by another.

A week ago their agent wanted to buy my place. I was so outraged
that I got down my map of Kentucky to see where these peculiar
beings originate. They come from a little town I the northwestern
corner of the State, on the Ohio River, named Henderson--named from
that Richard Henderson who in the year 1775 bought about half of
Kentucky from the Cherokees, and afterwards, as president of his
purchase, addressed the first legislative assembly ever held in the
West, seated under a big elm-tree outside the wall of Boonsborough
fort. These people must be his heirs, or they would never have
tried to purchase my few Sabine acres. It is no surprise to discover
that they are from the Green River country. They must bathe often
in that stream. I suppose they wanted my front yard to sow it in
penny-royal, the characteristic growth of those districts. They
surely distil it and use it as a perfume on their handkerchiefs. It
was perhaps from the founder of this family that Thomas Jefferson