in slow perfection or his rolls or waffles come to a faultless brown;
and I, being at work near the garden fence, would hear him tramping up
and down the walk on the other side and swearing at a family that had
such irregular meals. The camel, a lean beast, requires an
extraordinary supply of food, which it proceeds to store away in its
hump as nourishment to be drawn upon while it is crossing the desert.
There may be no long campaigning before the general; but if there were
and rations were short, why could he not live upon his own back? It is
of a thickness, a roundness, and an impenetrability that would have
justified Jackson in using him as a cotton-bale at the battle of New
Orleans.

Thus in my little corner of the world we have all been at the same
business of love, and I wonder whether the corner be not the world
itself: Mrs. Cobb and the general, Georgiana and I the sewing-girl and
the carpenter; for I had forgotten to note how quickly these two have
found out that they want each other. My arbor is at his service, if he
wishes it; and Jack shall keep silent about the mastodon.

It is true that from this sentimental enumeration I have omitted the
name of Mrs. Walters; but there is a secret here which not even
Georgiana herself will ever get from me. Mrs. Walters came to this
town twenty years ago from the region of Bowling Green. Some years
afterwards I made a trip into that part of the State to hear the
mocking-bird--for it fills those more southern groves, but never visits
ours; and while there I stepped by accident on this discovery: _There
never was any Mr. Walters_. It is her maiden name. But as I see the
freedom of her life and reflect upon the things that a widow can do and
an old maid cannot--with her own sex and with mine--I commend her
wisdom and leave her at peace. Indeed I have gone so far, when she has