had to hump himself. Try to bring before the
young man's defective mental vision a dissolving
view of a "good old-fashioned barn-raisin' "--and
the old man doing all the "raisin' " himself, and
"grubbin'," and "burnin' " logs and "underbrush,"
and "dreenin' " at the same time, and trying to coax
something besides calamus to grow in the spongy
little tract of swamp-land that he could stand in the
middle of and "wobble" and shake the whole farm.
Or, if you can't recall the many salient features of
the minor disadvantages under which the old man
used to labor, your pliant limbs may soon overtake
him, and he will smilingly tell you of trials and
privations of the early days, until your anxiety about
the young man just naturally stagnates, and dries
up, and evaporates, and blows away.

In this little side-show of existence the old man
is always worth the full price of admission. He
is not only the greatest living curiosity on exhibition,
but the object of the most genial solicitude and
interest to the serious observer. It is even good to
look upon his vast fund of afflictions, finding
prominent above them all that wholesome patience that
surpasseth understanding; to dwell compassionately
upon his prodigality of aches and ailments, and yet,
by his pride in their wholesale possession, and his
thorough resignation to the inevitable, continually to
be rebuked, and in part made envious of the old
man's right-of-title situation. Nature, after all, is