p-hazard, and began eating it with savage voracity, as
if made reckless by this act of self-denial. Re-seating himself as he
had chosen his apple, hap-hazard, he missed his chair, and keeled
over, bringing his heels in the air where his head should have been,
and his head on the rug where the dog and cat were, and the
half-munched plug in his mouth, plump into his windpipe, so as to
almost strangle him out of his breeches, and cause his buttons to fly
like grains from a corn-cob when thrown into a corn-sheller. Of
course, all the little folks fairly screamed with laughter, in which
even Uncle Juvinell could not help joining right heartily: nor would
he venture upon the broad wedge which he had cut out of his apple,
till his chuckle was well ended; when he remarked, that "Willie was
one of the boys we read about." To which Willie, picking himself up
again, replied, that "he rather thought he was not, just then, but
perhaps would be as soon as he could get back some of the breath he
had lost, and gather up the buttons he had shed." Then, drawing down
his waistcoat from under his arm-pits to hide a breadth of white
muslin not usually intended for the eyes of a mixed company, he
reseated himself with such care and circumspection, that the middle
seam of his breeches tallied exactly with the middle round of the
chair-back, and began mincing and nibbling his apple delicately like a
sheep, as if to show that he meant to profit by the lesson his fit of
strangling had taught him.

After a little while, when he saw that the children had had their fill
of laughter and red apples, Uncle Juvinell wiped the blade of his
knife with his bandanna, and said, "And now, my darlings, don't you
think we are getting along swimmingly?"

"Swimmingly!" they all chimed in with one voice.

"Gloriously?" again inquired Uncle Juvinell.

"Gloriously!" cried all the children at once, as pat to their uncle's
words as an echo to the sound. Whereupon the old gentleman's
spectacles shone with a lustre that was charming to see. In a moment
after, however, Bryce, the pugnacious urchin of ten, expressed himself
a little disappointed that they had had so much building of forts, and
digging and cutting of roads, and so much scouting and marching, and
so much getting ready to fight, and yet withal so little downright
fighting.

"You quite forget, Bryce, that affair of Grant's defeat there at Fort
Duquesne," said Willie. "In my opinion, that was a very dec