being blowed up? Take my advice and don't make haste in the downward road to destruction, nor the uphill one neither. A game ain't never through till it's played out, and the American eagle's a chicken with steel spurs. That air sweet singer of Israel that is so euphorbia he has to anchor himself to his boots, knows all the tricks, and is intimately acquainted with the cards, whether it's faro, poker, euchre, or French monte. But blamed if Providence ain't dealed you a better hand than you think. Never desperandum, as the Congressmen say, for while the lamp holds out to burn you may beat the blackleg all to flinders and sing and shout forever. Last night I went to bed thinking 'Humphreys had the stakes all in his pocket. This morning I found he was in a fairway to be beat out of his boots if you stood your ground like a man and a geneological descendant of Plymouth Rock!"Andrew stopped his loom, and, looking at August, said: "Our friend Jonas speaks somewhat periphrastically and euphuistically, and--he'll pardon me--but he speaks a little ambiguously."

"My love, I gin it up, as the fish-hawk said to the bald eagle one day. I kin rattle off odd sayings and big words picked up at Fourth-of-Julys and barbecues and big meetings, but when you begin to fire off your forty-pound bomb-shell book-words, I climb down as sudden as Davy Crockett's coon. Maybe I do speak unbiguously, as you say, but I was given you the biggest talkin' I had in the basket. And as for my good news, a feller don't like to eat up all his country sugar to once, I allow. But I say to our young and promising friend of German extraction, beloved, says I, hold onto that air limb a little longer and you're saved."

"But, Jonas," said August, spinning Andrew's winding-blade round and speaking slowly and bitterly, "a man don't like to be trifled with, if he is a Dutchman!"

"But supposing a man hasn't been trifled with, Dutchman or no Dutchman? Supposing it's all an optical delusion of the years? There's a word for you, Andrew, that ain't neither unbiguous nor peri-what-you-may-call-it."

"But," said August, "Betsey Malcolm--"

"Betsey Malcolm!" said Jonas. "Betsey Malcolm to thunder!" and then he whistled. "Set a dog to mind a basket of meat when his chops are a-waterin' for it! Set a kingfisher to take care of a fish-pond! Set a cat to raising your orphan chickens on the bottle! Set a spider to nurse a fly sick with dyspepsia from eating too much molasses! I'd rather trust a hen-hawk with a flock of partridges than to trust Betsey Malcolm with your 

 Prev. P 46/164 next