tell her of the Fewkes family--Old Man Fewkes, with
his bird's claws and a beard where a chin should have been, Surajah
Dowlah Fewkes with no thought except for silly inventions, Celebrate
Fourth Fewkes with no ideas at all--

[7] A family word, to the study of which one would like to direct the
attention of the philologists, since traces of it are found in the
conversation of folk of unsophisticated vocabulary outside the Clan van
de Marck. Doubtless it is of Yankee origin, and hence old English. It
may, of course, be derived according to Alice-in-Wonderland principles
from "skip" and "hither" or "thither" or all three; but the claim is
here made that it comes, like monkeys and men, from a common linguistic
ancestor.--G.v.d.M.

"But isn't there a man among them?" she had asked.

"A man!" I repeated.

"A man that knows how to shoot a pistol, or use a knife," she explained;
"and who would shoot or stab for a weak girl with nobody to take cart
of her."

I shook my head. Not one of these was a real man in the Kentucky, or
other proper sense: and Ma Fewkes with her boneless shoulders was not
one of those women of whom I had seen many in my life, who could be more
terrible to a wrong-doer than an army with bowie-knives.

"There's only two in the outfit," I went on, "that have got any sprawl
to them; and they are old Tom their bunged-up horse, and Rowena Fewkes."

"Who is she?" inquired Virginia Royall.

"A girl about your age," said I. "She's ragged and dirty, but she has a
little gumption."

And then she had skipped away, as I finally concluded, to keep Gowdy
from seeing her in conversation with me.

3

I pulled out for Manchester with Nathaniel Vincent Creede, whom
everybody calls just "N.V.," riding in the spring seat with me, and his
carpet-bag and his law library in the back of the wagon.

His library consisted of _Blackstone's Commentaries_--I saw them in his
present library in Monterey Centre only yesterday--_Chitty on Pleading_,
the _Code of Iowa of_ 1851, the _Session Laws_ of the state so far as it
had any session laws--a few thin books bound in yellow and pink boards.
Even these few books made a pretty heavy bundle for a man to carry in
one hand while he lugged all his other worldly goods in the other.

"Books are damned heavy, Mr. Vandemark," said he; "law books are
particularly heavy. My library is small; but there is an adage in our
profession which warns us to beware of the man of one book. He