hing about the ways o' them respectable, psalm-singing jay
birds." Having thus disposed of Amplach's character, later on, when
he was alone with Mary, or "Meary," as she chose to pronounce it, the
rascal worked upon her feelings with an account of the infant Amplach's
sufferings in the snowdrift and its agonized whisperings for "Meary!
Meary!" until real tears stood in Mary's blue eyes. "Let this be a
lesson to you," he concluded, drawing the ninepin dexterously from his
pocket, "for it took nigh a quart of the best forty-rod whisky to bring
that child to." Not only did Mary firmly believe him, but for weeks
afterwards "Julian Amplach"--this unhappy twin--was kept in a somnolent
attitude in the cart, and was believed to have contracted dissipated
habits from the effects of his heroic treatment.

Her numerous family was achieved in only two years, and succeeded her
first child, which was brought from Sacramento at considerable expense
by a Mr. William Dodd, also a teamster, on her seventh birthday. This,
by one of those rare inventions known only to a child's vocabulary,
she at once called "Misery"--probably a combination of "Missy," as she
herself was formerly termed by strangers, and "Missouri," her native
State. It was an excessively large doll at first--Mr. Dodd wishing to
get the worth of his money--but time, and perhaps an excess of maternal
care, remedied the defect, and it lost flesh and certain unemployed
parts of its limbs very rapidly. It was further reduced in bulk by
falling under the wagon and having the whole train pass over it,
but singularly enough its greatest attenuation was in the head and
shoulders--the complexion peeling off as a solid layer, followed by the
disappearance of distinct strata of its extraordinary composition. This
continued until the head and shoulders were much too small for even
its reduced frame, and all the devices of childish millinery--a shawl
secured with tacks and well hammered in, and a hat which tilted backward
and forward and never appeared at the same angle--failed to restore
symmetry. Until one dreadful morning, after an imprudent bath, the whole
upper structure disappeared, leaving two hideous iron prongs standing
erect from the spinal column. Even an imaginative child like Mary could
not accept this sort of thing as a head. Later in the day Jack Roper,
the blacksmith at the "Crossing," was concerned at the plaintive
appearance before his forge of a little girl clad in a