THE CYCLOPEEDY


Havin' lived next door to the Hobart place f'r goin' on thirty years, I
calc'late that I know jest about ez much about the case ez anybody else
now on airth, exceptin' perhaps it's ol' Jedge Baker, and he's so plaguy
old 'nd so powerful feeble that _he_ don't know nothin'.

It seems that in the spring uv '47--the year that Cy Watson's oldest boy
wuz drownded in West River--there come along a book-agent sellin' volyumes
'nd tracks f'r the diffusion uv knowledge, 'nd havin' got the recommend of
the minister 'nd uv the selectmen, he done an all-fired big business in
our part uv the county. His name wuz Lemuel Higgins, 'nd he wuz ez likely
a talker ez I ever heerd, barrin' Lawyer Conkey, 'nd everybody allowed
that when Conkey wuz round he talked so fast that the town pump 'u'd have
to be greased every twenty minutes.

One of the first uv our folks that this Lemuel Higgins struck wuz Leander
Hobart. Leander had jest marr'd one uv the Peasley girls, 'nd had moved
into the old homestead on the Plainville road,--old Deacon Hobart havin'
give up the place to him, the other boys havin' moved out West (like a lot
o' darned fools that they wuz!). Leander wuz feelin' his oats jest about
this time, 'nd nuthin' wuz too good f'r him.

"Hattie," sez he, "I guess I'll have to lay in a few books f'r readin' in
the winter time, 'nd I've half a notion to subscribe f'r a cyclopeedy. Mr.
Higgins here says they're invalerable in a family, and that we orter have
'em, bein' as how we're likely to have the fam'ly bime by."