ged observations with each other in low
tones, covertly watching Uncle and his family as if they had become very
interesting personages. Presently one moved to a seat a little nearer,
and both apparently became absorbed in their own affairs.

"But maybe I should beg pardon, Mister. I've been talking to you all
this time without introducing myself. I know it isn't just the thing,
but I'm not used to sassiety. I'm Jeremiah Jones, and what is your
name?"

"My name is Hezekiah Moses," said the traveling man, solemnly.

"Ah," remarked Uncle, warmly, "that sounds a right smart like a Jew
name, but you don't look like a Jew. I Judge your parents were very good
people."

"They were very pious people, and, of course, brought me up in the way
I should go. You have quite a charming family."

"There now, I knew you had good judgments and I am glad for you to say
so. Of course me and Sarah are too old to be charming and Johnny is too
bad, but I take no exceptions to Fanny."

Mr. Moses thoroughly agreed with Uncle on the latter observation.

"Johnny is all right but only last week he was training one of my Jersey
calves to walk a plank like he saw the lions In the circus and it fell
off and broke its neck and that was not a month after it had took the
prize at our county fair. And, after I had took him atween my knees and
talked to him about his responsibility to his Creator, he didn't wait
two days till he cut off the colt's tail so as to make it bobbed like
the British and it kicked and broke its leg on the cross bar. But I do
believe he's got the making of a man in him after all. I think he must
be like his father, though I never seed him. You see Mary she run off to
marry some man she fell in with when she went off to school, and I
forbid her letting him come to see her, for you see he might be some
city fortune hunter; but Mary said she knowed, and so one day when we
went to town somebody drove up to our house in a buggy and I never seed
her any more. I didn't think she ought to take that way to somebody I
didn't know. I must have been hard hearted them days, but somehow I
couldn't help it. Sarah she went to see them lots of times over in the
big town across in Ohio but I couldn't leave Indiana and when Johnny was
born Mary she died a senden good words to me but I couldn't help it."

The old man drew his sleeve across his eyes and continued, "You see
Mary's man was all broke down, and he told Sarah to take the children