agreeable to these lovely maids, lacing their shoes and dusting their
chamber, and right gallantly did I serve them until evening.

After supper reappeared my evil genius in the person of the landlord,
who took me out to the woodshed. "Dutchy, I have decided to adopt you
as my only son; have you ever bucked a wood saw?" said he, and a
sardonic leer distorted his evil features. After I recovered
sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, "Sir, know ye
not that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon
temple?" "Ha! Ha!" laughed the villain, "get busy now, son, and if by
morning this wood has not been cut, you will go minus your
breakfast." Thereupon he locked me in.

Caught as a rat in a trap, I had no alternative but to comply with
this man's outrageous demands. Despairingly I plied that abominable
instrument of torture, the national bucksaw of America. This is the
only American institution I could never accustom myself to. I have
endured bucking bronchos in New Mexico, I have bucked the tiger in
Arizona, but to buck a wood-saw--perish the thought! Sore and weary,
I lay down in a corner of the shed on some hay and fell asleep. I
dreamed that I heard screams of women, mingled with song and
laughter, and through it all the noise of music and dancing. Then the
dream changed into a horrible nightmare in the shape of a big
sawhorse which kicked at me and threatened me with hard labor.

Toward morning, when the door was opened and a drunken ruffian
entered, I awoke from my troubled slumbers. "Hi, Dutchy, and have yez
any tin?" he threatened. "Kind sir," I replied, "when I departed for
the West I left all my wealth behind me." Verily, now I was proving
myself the worthy scion of valiant men, who had laid aside hauberk,