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she promises to be an invidious Christian. I am rather disturbed
by the gossip regarding the elder daughter. But this is so conflicting
that one impression is made only to be effaced by another.

A week ago their agent wanted to buy my place. I was so outraged
that I got down my map of Kentucky to see where these peculiar
beings originate. They come from a little town I the northwestern
corner of the State, on the Ohio River, named Henderson--named from
that Richard Henderson who in the year 1775 bought about half of
Kentucky from the Cherokees, and afterwards, as president of his
purchase, addressed the first legislative assembly ever held in the
West, seated under a big elm-tree outside the wall of Boonsborough
fort. These people must be his heirs, or they would never have
tried to purchase my few Sabine acres. It is no surprise to discover
that they are from the Green River country. They must bathe often
in that stream. I suppose they wanted my front yard to sow it in
penny-royal, the characteristic growth of those districts. They
surely distil it and use it as a perfume on their handkerchiefs. It
was perhaps from the founder of this family that Thomas Jefferson
got authority for his statement that the Ohio is the most beautiful
river in the world--unless, indeed, the President formed that notion
of the Ohio upon lifting his eyes to it from the contemplation of
Green River. Henderson! Green River region! To this town and to
the blue-grass country as Boeotia to Attica in the days of Pericles.
Hereafter I shall call these people my Green River Boeotians.

A few days later their agent again, a little frigid, very urgent--this
time to buy me out on my own terms, _any_ terms. But what was back
of all this I inquired. I did not know these people, had never done
them a favor. Why, then, such determination to have me removed?
Why such bitterness, vindictiveness, ungovernable passion?

That was the point, he replied. This family had never wronged _me_.
I had never even seen _them_. Yet they had heard of nothing but
my intense dislike of them and opposition to their becoming my
neighbors. They could not forego their plans, but they were quite
willing to give me the chance of leaving their vicinity, on whatever
I might regard the most advantageous terms.

Oh, my mocking-bird, my mocking-bird! When you have been sitting
on _other_ front porches, have you, by the divine law of your being,
been reproduc