ing" town,--much of it not
over two blocks wide, and stretching along for two miles, at the foot
of high palisades. West Virginia is not far behind, in enterprise,
with the salt-work towns of New Haven, Hartford, and Mason
City,--bespeaking, in their names, a Connecticut ancestry.

The afternoon sun gushed out, and the face of Nature was cleanly
beautiful, as, leaving the convolutions of the Pomeroy Bend, we
entered upon that long river-sweep to the south-by-southwest, which
extends from Pomeroy to the Big Sandy, a distance of sixty-eight
miles. A mile or two below Cheshire, O. (256 miles), we put in for
the night on the West Virginia shore. There is a natural pier of rocky
ledge, above that a sloping beach of jagged stone, and then the little
grassy terrace which we have made our home.

Searching for milk and eggs, I walked along a railway track and then
up through a cornfield, to a little log farm-house, whose broad porch
was shingled with "shakes" and shaded by a lusty grape-vine. Fences,
house, and outbuildings had been newly whitewashed, and there was all
about an uncommon air of neatness. A stout little girl of eleven or
twelve, met me at the narrow gate opening through the garden palings.
It may be because a gypsying trip like this roughens one in many
ways,--for man, with long living near to Nature's heart, becomes of
the earth, earthy,--that she at first regarded me with suspicious
eyes, and, with one hand resting gracefully on her hip, parleyed over
the gate, as to what price I was paying in cash, for eggs and milk,
and where I hailed from.

With her wealth of blond hair done up in a saucy knot behind; her
round, honest face; her lips thick, and parted over pearly teeth; her
nose saucily _retrousse_; and her flashing, outspoken blue eyes,
this barefooted child of Nature had a certain air of authority, a
consciousness of power, which made her womanly beyond her years. She
must have seen that I admired her, this little "cracker" queen, in her
clean but tattered calico frock; for her mood soon melted, and
with much grace she ushered me within the house. Calling Sam, an
eight-year-old, to "keep the gen'lem'n comp'ny," she prettily excused
herself, and scampered off up the hillside in search of the cows.

A barefooted, loose-jointed, gaunt, sandy-haired, freckled, open-eyed
youngster is Sam. He came lounging into the room, and, taking my
hat, hung it on a peg above the fireplace; then, dropping into a big
rock