he white-hot iron, the shriek of the locomotive whistle
and all night long the roar and rattle of the passing trains, but
so mellowed by the distance that the harsh sounds seem almost
musical--almost as pleasant and as easily endured as the voices of
nature. And in the early morning a look from the chamber window
perhaps may show a locomotive whirling down the valley around the
sharp curves with its white streamer flung out upon the green
hillside, and seeming like a snowy ribbon cut from the huge mass of
vapor which lies low upon the surface of the stream.

The name of this town among the hills is--well, it has a very
charming Indian name, to reveal which might be to point with too much
distinctness to the worthy people who in some sort figure in the
following pages. It shall be called Millburg in those pages, and its
inhabitants shall tell their stories and play their parts under the
cover of that unsuggestive title; so that the curious reader of little
faith shall have difficulty if he resolves to discover the whereabouts
of the village and to inquire respecting the author's claim to
credibility as a historian.

CHAPTER II.

_THE TERRIBLE MISHAP TO MR. FOGG'S BABY_.

Mr. and Mrs. Fogg have a young baby which was exceedingly restless and
troublesome at night while it was cutting its teeth. Mr. Fogg, devoted
and faithful father that he is, used to take a good deal more than his
share of the nursing of the infant, and often, when he would turn
out of bed for the fifteenth or sixteenth time and with fluttering
garments and unshod feet carry the baby to and fro, soothing it with
a little song, he would think how true it is, as Napoleon once said,
that "the only real courage is two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage."
Mr. Fogg thought he had a reasonable amount of genuine bravery, and
justly, for he performed the functions of a nurse with unsurpassed
patience and good humor.

One night, however, the baby was unusually wakeful and tempestuous,
and after struggling with it for several hours he called Mrs. Fogg and
suggested that it would be well to give the child some paregoric
to relieve it from the intense pain from which it was evidently
suffering. The medicine stood upon the bureau, but Mrs. Fogg had to go
down stairs to the dining-room to get some sugar; and while she was
fumbling about in the entry in the dark it occurred to Mr. Fogg that
he had heard of persons being relieved from pain by applications of
me