"Waal, what be you, anyhow?"

"Well, I practice medicine, and take care of the sick."

"Dew ye? Waal, do ye ever cure anybody?"

"O, sometimes; quite frequently, in fact."

"Dew ye! waal, there's a woman up here to Lake Village,'Squire
Blaisdell's wife, who has had the dropsy more'n twelve years; been
filling' all the time till they tell me she's bigger'n a hogshead
now, and she's had a hundred doctors, and the more doctors she has
the bigger she gets; what d' ye think of that now?"

I answered that I thought it was quite likely, and then turned away
from the landlord to talk to my friends about our proposed sport for
to- morrow, mentally making note of 'Squire Blaisdell's wife in Lake
Village.

After breakfast next morning we went out on the lake, cut holes in
the ice, set our lines, and before dinner we had taken several fine
trout and pickerel, the largest and finest of which we put into a
box with ice, and sent as a present to President Pierce, in
Washington. We had agreed, the night before, to fish for him the
first day, and to send him the best specimens we could from his
native state. After dinner my friends started to go out on the ice
again, and I told them "I guess'd I wouldn't go with them, I had
fished enough for that day." They insisted I should go, but I told
them I preferred to take a walk and explore the country. So they