a daily paper at the state capitol; and latterly a prolonged session
of the legislature, where I specially reported, having told
threateningly upon my health, I took both the advantage of a brief
vacation, and the invitation of a young bachelor Senator, to get out
of the city for awhile, and bask my respiratory organs in the
revivifying rural air of Zekesbury--the home of my new friend.

"It'll pay you to get out here," he said, cordially, meeting me at the
little station, "and I'm glad you've come, for you'll find no end of
odd characters to amuse you." And under the very pleasant sponsorship
of my senatorial friend, I was placed at once on genial terms with
half the citizens of the little town--from the shirt-sleeved nabob of
the county office to the droll wag of the favorite loafing-place--the
rules and by-laws of which resort, by the way, being rudely charcoaled
on the wall above the cutter's bench, and somewhat artistically
culminating in an original dialectic legend which ran thus:

F'rinstance, now whar _some_ folks gits
To relyin' on their wits.
Ten to one they git too smart,
And spile it all right at the start!--
Feller wants to jest go slow
And do his _thinkin'_ first, you know:----
_Ef I can't think up somepin' good,_
_I set still and chaw my cood!_

And it was at this inviting rendezvous, two or three evenings
following my arrival, that the general crowd, acting upon the random
proposition of one of the boys, rose as a man and wended its hilarious
way to the town hall.