him at a
single mouthful.

"The child whom the neighborhood at that time accused of this act was
known in later life as Fithian Minuit, babe of a woman of mixed
English and Finnish-Dutch descent, who came from the fishermen's town
of Head of Elk, a few hours jog to the southward, to sell fish to the
surveying camp. She was a woman of mingled severity of features and
bodily obesity, uniting in one temper and frame the Scandinavian and
the Low Dutch traits, ignorant good-humor, grim commerce, and stolid
appetite. Her baby was the fattest, quaintest, and ugliest in the
country; ready to devour any thing, to grin at any thing, go to the
arms of everybody, and, in short, it represented all the traits of
the Middle State races--the government of the members, including the
brain, by the belly.

"One day this Finnish-Dutch baby--aged perhaps two years--was picked
up by one of the assistant surveyors and carried into the tent of
Charles Mason. The great surveyor was at that instant bending down
over a small metallic object which he was examining through the medium
of a lens. He recognized the child, and seemed glad of the opportunity
to dismiss more serious occupation from his mind, so he instantly
leaped up and poked the fat urchin with his thumb, tempting the bite
of its teeth with his forefinger, and was otherwise reducing his tired
faculties to the needs of a child's amusement, when suddenly the voice
of its mother at the tent's opening drew him away.

"'Fresh fish, mighty surveyor! Fall shad, and the most beautiful
yellow perch. Buy something for the sake of Minuit's baby!'

"The celebrated surveyor, who seemed in an admirable humor, stepped
just outside the tent to look at the fish, and in that little interval
his assistant, seized with inquisitiveness, stole up to his table, and
picked up the tiny object lying there under the magnifying glass.

"'This is the little ticking seducer which absorbs my master's time,'
he said. 'Why, it isn't big enough for an infant to count the minutes
of its life upon it!'

"At this the fat, good-humored baby, anticipating something to eat,
reached out its hands. The surveyor's assistant, in a moment of
mischief, put the object in the child's grasp. The child clutched it,
bit at it, and swallowed it whole in an instant.

"Before the assistant surveyor could think of any other harm done than
the possible choking of the child, the child's mother and the great
surveyor entered the tent