would be just as well to have a few more dollars and would not
leave my present home, which, bad it was, was the only one I had,
until I had acquired a little more money. But coming home from
work one evening I found the old negress in an unusually bad
humor, even for her. She gave me a cruel thrashing just to give
vent to her feelings, and that decided me to leave at once,
without waiting to further improve my financial condition. I was
getting to be too big a boy to be beaten around by that old
wretch, and having no ties of friendship, and no one being at all
interested in me, I was determined to get away before my tormentor
could get another chance at me.

I would go to St. Louis, but I must get even with the old hag
before starting. I did not wish to leave in debt to anyone in the
neighborhood and so I cudgeled my brain to devise a means for
settling old scores with my self-constituted governess.

Toward evening I wandered into a small pasture, doing my best to
think how I could best pay off the black termagant with safety to
myself, when with great good luck I suddenly beheld a huge
hornet's nest, hanging in a bunch of shrubbery. My plan instantly
and fully developed. Quickly I returned to the house and hastily
gathered what little clothing I owned into a bundle, done up in my
one handkerchief, an imitation of bandanna, of very loud pattern.
This bundle I secreted in the barn and then hied me to the
hornet's nest. Approaching the swinging home of the hornets very
softly, so as not to disturb the inmates, I stuffed the entrance
to the hornet castle with sassafras leaves, and taking the great
sphere in my arms I bore it to a back window of the kitchen where
the black beldame was vigorously at work within and contentedly