Sophrony's pig-pens used to be in the old days.

Me and Jonadab see how things was going, and we'd look at one another
and wink and shake our heads when the pair'd go by together. But all
that was afore the count come aboard.

We got our first letter from the count about the third of June. The
writing was all over the plate like a biled dinner, and the English
looked like it had been shook up in a bag, but it was signed with a nine
fathom, toggle-jinted name that would give a pollparrot the lockjaw, and
had the word "Count" on the bow of it.

You never see a feller happier than Peter T. Brown.

"Can he have rooms?" says Peter. "CAN he? Well, I should rise to
elocute! He can have the best there is if yours truly has to bunk in the
coop with the gladsome Plymouth Rock. That's what! He says he's a count
and he'll be advertised as a count from this place to where rolls the
Oregon."

And he was, too. The papers was full of how Count What's-his-Name was
hanging out at the "Old Home House," and we got more letters from rich
old women and pork-pickling money bags than you could shake a stick at.
If you want to catch the free and equal nabob of a glorious republic,
bait up with a little nobility and you'll have your salt wet in no time.
We had to rig up rooms in the carriage house, and me and Jonadab slept
in the haymow.

The count himself hove in sight on June fifteenth. He was a little,
smoked Italian man with a pair of legs that would have been carried away