there was nobody near who could help laughing with
him. And so I began to think Firm the most witty and pleasant of men,
though I tried to look away.

But perhaps the most careful and delicate of things was to see how Uncle
Sam went on. I could not understand him at all just then, and thought
him quite changed from my old Uncle Sam; but afterward, when I came
to know, his behavior was as clear and shallow as the water of his own
river. He had very strange ideas about what he generally called "the
female kind." According to his ideas (and perhaps they were not so
unusual among mankind, especially settlers), all "females" were of a
good but weak and consistently inconsistent sort. The surest way to make
them do whatever their betters wanted, was to make them think that it
was not wanted, but was hedged with obstacles beyond their power to
overcome, and so to provoke and tantalize them to set their hearts upon
doing it. In accordance with this idea (than which there can be none
more mistaken), he took the greatest pains to keep me from having a word
to say to Firm; and even went so far as to hint, with winks and nods
of pleasantry, that his grandson's heart was set upon the pretty Miss
Sylvester, the daughter of a man who owned a herd of pigs, much too near
our saw-mills, and herself a young woman of outrageous dress, and in
a larger light contemptible. But when Mr. Gundry, without any words,
conveyed this piece of news to me, I immediately felt quite a liking for
gaudy but harmless Pennsylvania--for so her parents had named her when
she was too young to help it; and I heartily hoped that she might suit
Firm, which she seemed all the more likely to do as his conduct could
not be called noble. Upon that point, however, I said not a word,
leaving him purely to judge for himself, and feeling it a great relief
that now he could not say any thing more to me. I was glad that his
taste was so easily pleased, and I told Suan Isco how glad I was.

This I had better have left unsaid, for it led to a great explosion,
and drove me away from the place altogether before the new mill was
finished, and before I should otherwise have gone from friends who were
so good to me; not that I could have staid there much longer, even if
this had never come to pass; for week by week and month by month I was
growing more uneasy: uneasy not at my obligations or dependence upon
mere friends (for they managed that so kindly that I seemed to confer
th