for the skeletons of extinct animals. My father, who was interested in
antiquities, had had much correspondence with Mr. Jefferson in regard
to earlier discoveries at that spot; and when this expedition was
undertaken he formed one of the explorers. Jack, his servant, at that
time a strapping young fellow, had been taken along as one of the
negroes who were to do the digging.

The wonders then unearthed have always been the greenest spot in old
Jack's memory; so that they have been growing larger ever since.
Whenever I wish to hear him discourse with the dogmatic bluster of a
sage who had original information as to geological times, I set Jack to
talking about the bones of the Mastodon-Maximus, the name of which he
gets from me, with a puzzled shake of his head, about regularly once a
year. It is my private opinion that old Jack believes Big Bone Lick to
have been the place where the Ark settled, and these to have been the
bones of animals that had been swept out by Noah on landing.

Last night I had merely to ask him whether he credited the story of an
old traveller that he had once used some ribs found there for his
tent-poles and a tooth for his hominy beater; whereupon Dilsy,
foreseeing what was coming, excused herself on the plea of sudden
rheumatism and went to bed, as I wished she should.

The hinges on the little private gate under Georgiana's window I keep
rusty; this enables me to note when any one enters my garden.
By-and-by I heard the hinges softly creak, whereupon I feigned not to
believe what Jack was telling me; whereupon he fell into an harangue of
such affectionate and sustained vehemence that when the hinges creaked
again I was never able to determine. Was ever such usage made before
of an antediluvian monster?