s a brother to the little girl who had told the monkey story,
and he, too, had evidently been talking to his grandfather. He told two
stories, and Miss Laura listened eagerly, for they were about Fairport.

The boy said that when his grandfather was young, he lived in Fairport,
Maine. On a certain day he stood in the market square to see their first
stage-coach put together. It had come from Boston in pieces, for there
was no one in Fairport that could make one. The coach went away up into
the country one day, and came back the next. For a long time no one
understood driving the horses properly, and they came in day after day
with the blood streaming from them. The whiffletree would swing round
and hit them, and when their collars were taken off, their necks would
be raw and bloody. After a time, the men got to understand how to drive
a coach, and the horses did not suffer so much.

The other story was about a team-boat, not a steamboat. More than
seventy years ago, they had no steamers running between Fairport and the
island opposite where people went for the summer, but they had what they
called a team-boat, that is, a boat with machinery to make it go, that
could be worked by horses. There were eight horses that went around and
around, and made the boat go. One afternoon, two dancing masters, who
were wicked fellows, that played the fiddle, and never went to church on
Sundays, got on the boat, and sat just where the horses had to pass them
as they went around.

Every time the horses went by, they jabbed them with their penknives.
The man who was driving the horses at last saw the blood dripping from
them, and the dancing masters were found out. Some young men on the boat
were so angry that they caught up a rope's end, and gave the dancing
masters a lashing, and then threw them into the water and made them swim
to the island.

When this boy took a seat, a young girl read some verses that she had
clipped from a newspaper:

"Don't kill the toads, the ugly toads,
That hop around your door;
Each meal the little toad doth eat
A hundred bugs or more.

"He sits around with aspect meek,
Until the bug hath neared,
Then shoots he forth his little tongue
Like lightning double-geared.

"And then he soberly doth wink,
And shut his ugly mug,
And patiently doth wait until
There comes another bug."

Mr. Maxwell told a good dog story after this. He sa