reputation as a good watch dog, because on light nights he barked the
shining hours away.

Boswell was a little short-legged dog, built like a clumsy weasel;
for his body was so long it seemed to plead for six legs instead of
four, to support it, and no one could blame his back for swaying a
little in the middle. Boswell was a brindled dog. He had yellow spots
like pumpkin seeds over his eyes. His affection for Johnson was
extreme. He looked up to Johnson. If he startled a bird at the
roadside, or scratched at the roots of a tree after his imagination,
he came back to Johnson for approval, wagging his tail until it made
his whole body undulate. Johnson sometimes condescended to rub a nose
against his silly head, and this threw him into such fire of delight
that he was obliged to get out of the wagon-track, and bark around
himself in a circle until the carriage left him behind. Then he came
up to Johnson again, and panted along beside him, with a smile as
open and constant as sunshine.

No such caravan as the Padgett family has been seen moving West
since those days when all the States were in a ferment: when New York
and the New England States poured into Ohio, and Pennsylvania and
Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee into Indiana, Illinois, and even--as a
desperate venture, Missouri. The Old National Turnpike was then a
lively thoroughfare. Sometimes a dozen white-covered wagons stretched
along in company. All classes of society were represented among the
movers. There were squalid lots to--be avoided as thieves: and there
were carriages full of families who would raise Senators, Presidents,
and large financiers in their new home. The forefathers of many a man
and woman, now abroad studying older civilization in Europe, came
West as movers by the wagon route.