ects, which he
played to accompany his singing of entertaining countryside songs.
Most of these were melodious, and highly descriptive. "Jack" had much
music in his soul, and sang with good effect.

[Illustration: "One melody that he sang from the heart"]

There was one melody that he sang oftenest, and sang from the
heart--one that was rendered nightly, regardless of any variation in
the program; a composition that embraced seventeen verses, each
followed by a soothing lullaby refrain; a song which, every time he
sang it, carried "Jack" again to his old home in the Sunny South, and
seemed to give him surcease from all the ills of life. Of that song a
single verse is here reproduced, with deep regret that the other
sixteen are lost, with all except a small fraction of the tune. Yet,
cold, inanimate music notes on the paper would convey, to one who
never heard him sing them, only the skeleton; the life, sympathy and
soul of the song would be lacking. We needed no other soporific. Here
it is:

Oh, the days of bygone joys,
They never will come back to me;
When I was with the girls and boys,
A-courting, down in Tennessee.
Ulee, ilee, aloo, ee--
Courting, down in Tennessee.

It was "Jack's" habit to allow his head to hang to the left, due,
presumably, to much practice in holding down the large end of his
violin with his chin. He was prone to sleep a great deal, and even as
he sat in the driver's seat of a "prairie-schoner," or astride a mule,
the attitude described often resulted in his being accused of napping
while on duty. The climatic conditions peculiar to the plains, and the
slow, steady movement of the conveyances, were conducive to
drowsiness, in consequence of which everybody was all the time sleepy.
But "Jack" was born that way, and the very frequent evidences of it in
his case led to a general understanding that, whenever he was not in
sight, he was hidden away somewhere asleep.

"Jack's" amiability, too, was a permanent condition. Apparently no one
could make him angry or resentful. For this reason, he was the target
for many pranks perpetrated by the boys. Like this:

One evening "Jack" took his blanket and located for the night at a
spot apart from the others of the company, under a convenient sage
bush. The next morning he was overlooked until after breakfast. When
the time came for hitching the teams, he was not at his post. A
search finally revealed him, still