e
language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!--he had been turned
adrift by his father, to whom he had been "somewhat of a dutiful son";
he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently "to the scenes of his
boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to
get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread
a humid veil of darkness around his expectations; but he was always
promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned
to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had
dwelt among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers
of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out--the cunning creature--that
they refer their differences to the learned for settlement; he had
achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the Achilles of the
Florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-book and started
to school; he had fallen in love with Ambulinia Valeer while she was
teething, but had kept it to himself awhile, out of the reverential awe
which he felt for the child; but now at last, like the unyielding Deity
who follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves to
shake off his embarrassment, and to return where before he had only
worshiped. The Major, indeed, has made up his mind to rise up and shake
his faculties together, and to see if HE can't do that thing himself.
This is not clear. But no matter about that: there stands the hero,
compact and visible; and he is no mean structure, considering that his
creator had never structure, considering that his creator had never
created anything before, and hadn't anything but rags and wind to build
with this time. It seems to me that no one can contemplate this odd
creature, this quaint and curious blatherskite, without admiring
McClintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling grateful to him; for
McClintock made him, he gave him to us; without McClintock we could not
have had him, and would now be poor.

But we must come to the feast again. Here is a courtship scene, down
there in the romantic glades among the raccoons, alligators, and things,
that has merit, peculiar literary merit. See how Achilles woos.
Dwell upon the second sentence (particularly the close of it) and the
beginning of the third. Never mind the new personage, Leos, who is
intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained. That is McClintock's way;
it is his habit; it is a part of his genius; he cannot