"You see, Uncle Josh," said the Doctor, laughing, "what comes of a
young man's going a week to college."

"The young man didn't know anything at all, before," declared Uncle
Josh, "and he seems to know less now, amazingly."

This was Uncle Josh's sincere opinion, and was received with a shout
of laughter, in which Bart heartily joined. Indeed, it was his first
sincere laugh for many a day.

Johnson asked him "whether he went to the Ohio river," and being
answered in the affirmative, asked him "by what route he went, and
what he saw."

Uncle Jonah, as Bart usually called him, was one of his very few
recognized friends, and asked in a way that induced him to make a
serious answer.

"I walked the most of the way there, and all the way back. I went by
way of Canton, Columbus, Dayton, and so to Cincinnati, and returned
the same way."

"What do you think of that part of the State which you saw?"

"Unquestionably we have the poorest part of it. As our ancestors
landed on the most desolate part of the continent, so we took the
worst part of Ohio. If you were to see the wheat-fields of Stark, or
the corn on the Scioto, and the whole of the region about Xenia and
Dayton, and on the Miami, you would want to emigrate."