must own, Doctor, that I showed great tenderness for your
reputation."

"You certainly did me a kindness."

"Thank you, Doctor."

"I should raly like to know," said Uncle Josh, "what you are thanking
the Doctor for, I should."

"Well, go on."

"I went off," continued Bart. "The fact is, I thought that that
retreat of the sciences might hold that little learning, which is a
dangerous thing--as you used to not quote exactly--and I thought it
prudent to avoid that 'Pierian spring.'"

"What is the young man talking about now?" inquired Uncle Josh. "I
would raly like to know, I would."

"I must ask the Doctor to explain," answered Bart. "I was referring to
one of his old drinking-places, where, according to him, the more
one drank the soberer he grew. You would not fancy that tipple, would
you?"

"You see, Uncle Josh," said the Doctor, laughing, "what comes of a
young man's going a week to college."

"The young man didn't know anything at all, before," declared Uncle
Josh, "and he seems to know less now, amazingly."

This was Uncle Josh's sincere opinion, and was received with a shout
of laughter, in which Bart heartily joined. Indeed, it was his first
sincere laugh for many a day.

Johnson asked him "whether he went to the Ohio river," and being
answered in the affirmative, asked him "by what route he went, and
what he saw."

Uncle Jonah, as Bart usually called him, was one of his very few
recognized friends, and asked in a way that induced him to make a
serious answer.

"I walked the most of the way there, and all the way back. I went by
way of Canton, Columbus, Dayton, and so to Cincinnati, and returned
the same way."

"What do you think of that part of the State which you saw?"

"Unquestionably we have the poorest part of it. As our ancestors
landed on the most desolate part of the continent, so we took the
worst part of Ohio. If you were to see the wheat-fields of Stark, or
the corn on the Scioto, and the whole of the region about Xenia and
Dayton, and on the Miami, you would want to emigrate."

"What about the people?"

"Oh, dear! I didn't see much of them, and that little did not make
me wish to see more. The moment you step across the south line of the
Reserve you step into a foreign country, and among a foreign people,
who speak a foreign language, and who know one of us as quick as they
see us; and they seem to have a very prudent distrust of us. After
passing this black, Dutch region, you