possessed a greater savage than Tecumseh. He took what he wanted and
appealed to nature, like the Indian. He stole nothing; he merely took
it. He served, with anything convenient, from his fists to a
blunderbuss, his _fi. fa._ and his _ca. sa._ upon wondering but
submissive mankind. Need I say that this was before the perfect day of
Isaac and Jacob Cannon?"

"They would have socked it to him, I reckon," Jimmy exclaimed,
consonantly.

Mr. Jacob Cannon gave a tender smile, such as the gray horse emits at
the prospect of oats, and continued:

"Such was the multiplicand to make the future race. Here, too, raged the
boundary-line debate between Penns and Calverts, with occasional raids
and broken heads, and a noble suit in chancery of fifty years, till no
man's title was known, and, instead of improving their lands, our
voluptuous predecessors improved chiefly their opportunities. You cut
sundry cords of wood and hauled it to the landing, and Ebenezer Johnson
coolly scowed it over to his paradise at the mouth of Broad Creek. You
had a little parcel of negroes, but the British war-ships, in two
successive wars, lay in the river mouth and beckoned them off. Having no
interest in any certain property, the foresters of the Nanticoke would
rather trade with the enemy than fight for foolish ideas; and so this
region was more than half Tory, and is still half passive, the other
half predatory. To neither half of such a quotient belongs the house of
Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"

His nostrils swelled a trifle with military spirit, and he raised the
bridge of his nose delicately, turning to observe his instinctive
companion.

"If it's any harm I won't ask it," the easy-going mariner spoke, "but
air you two Cannons ary kin to ole Patty Cannon?"

Mr. Cannon smiled.

"In Adam all sinned--there we may have been connected," he said. "The
question you ask may one day be actionable, sir. The Cannons are a
numerous people in our region, of fair substance, such as we have, but
they showed nothing to vary the equation of subsistence here till there
arose the mother of Isaac and Jacob Cannon. She was a remarkable woman;
unassisted, she procured the charter for Cannon's Ferry, and made the
port settlement of that name by the importance her ferry acquired; and
when she died there were found in her house nine hundred dollars in
silver--for she never would take any paper money--the earnings of that
sequestered ferry, to start her sons on their