nobody is here to see, at
least nobody whose seeing I mind; and I'll teach every other creature that
wants to learn. I haven't much more than a week to remain in this blessed
purgatory, in that last week perhaps I may teach the boy enough to go on
alone when I am gone.

_Thursday, 21st._--I took a long ride to-day all through some new woods
and fields, and finally came upon a large space sown with corn for the
people. Here I was accosted by such a shape as I never beheld in the worst
of my dreams; it looked at first, as it came screaming towards me, like a
live specimen of the arms of the Isle of Man, which, as you may or may not
know, are three legs joined together, and kicking in different directions.
This uncouth device is not an invention of the Manxmen, for it is found on
some very ancient coins,--Greek, I believe; but at any rate it is now the
device of our subject Island of Man, and, like that set in motion, and
nothing else, was the object that approached me, only it had a head where
the three legs were joined, and a voice came out of the head to this
effect, 'Oh missis, you hab to take me out of dis here bird field, me no
able to run after birds, and ebery night me lick because me no run after
dem.' When this apparition reached me and stood as still as it could, I
perceived it consisted of a boy who said his name was 'Jack de bird
driver.' I suppose some vague idea of the fitness of things had induced
them to send this living scarecrow into the cornfield, and if he had been
set up in the midst of it, nobody, I am sure, would have imagined he was
anything else; but it seems he was expected to run after the feathered
fowl who alighted on the grain field, and I do not wonder that he did not
fulfil this expectation. His feet, legs, and knees were all maimed and
distorted, his legs were nowhere thicker than my wrist, his feet were a
yard apart from each other, and his knees swollen and knocking together.
What a creature to ran after birds! He implored me to give him some meat,
and have him sent back to Little St. Simon's Island, from which he came,
and where he said his poor limbs were stronger and better.

Riding home, I passed some sassafras trees, which are putting forth
deliciously fragrant tassels of small leaves and blossoms, and other
exquisite flowering shrubs, which are new to me, and enchant me perhaps
all the more for their strangeness. Before reaching the house, I was
stopped by one of our multitudinous