Yazoo, the White, the Arkansas, the Missouri,
and all the smaller tributaries of the Mississippi.

New Boston had long been dropped from the list of post-towns, but every
cross-road for miles around had a fingerboard showing the direction and
telling the distance to New Boston. Upon a tall cottonwood-tree on the
river-bank, and nearly in front of Wardelow's residence, was an immense
signboard bearing the name of "New Boston Landing," and on the other
side of the river, at a ferry-staging belonging to a crossing whose
other terminus was a mile further down the river, was a sign which
informed travelers that persons wishing to go to New Boston would find a
skiff marked "Wardelow" tied near the staging.

The old man never went to Mount Pisgah for stores, or up the river to
fish, or even into his own cornfield and garden, without affixing to his
door a placard telling where he had gone and when he would return.

When he went to the cemetery, which he frequently did, a statement to
that effect, and a plan showing the route to and through the cemetery,
was always appended to his door, and, as he could never clearly imagine
his boy as having passed the childhood in which he had last seen him,
all the signboards, placards, and circulars were in large capital
letters.

Even when the river overflowed its banks, which it did nearly every
Spring, the old man did not leave his house. He would not have another
story built upon it, as he was advised to do, lest Stevie might fail to
recognize it on his return; but, after careful study, he had the house
raised until the foundation was above high-water mark, and then had the
ground made higher, but sloped so gradually that the boy could not
notice the change.

When one after another of the city's "plots," upon which deserted houses
stood, were sold for default in payment of taxes, old Wardelow bought
them himself--they always went for a song, and the old man preferred to
own them, lest some one else might destroy the ruins, and thus make the
place unfamiliar to the returning wanderer.

Of friends he had almost none. Although he was intelligent, industrious,
ingenious, and owned a library which passed for quite a large one in
those days and in the new West, he cared to talk on only one subject,
and as that was of no particular interest to other people, and
became, in the course of time, extremely stale to those who did not like
it, the people of Mount Pisgah and the adjoining count