"Big Halchee?" said the farmer—"that is a creek, a brook merely; but the land there is said to be good. 'Tis unhealthy, it is true."
"The deuce it is!" exclaimed the shoemaker, startled. "Dr. Normann told us it lay in the healthiest part of the State."
"Well, then, it must be a long way up the Creek."
"I don't know what you mean by crick," grunted the brewer; "the place is said to be fifteen miles from the Mississippi, and there are some houses upon it."
"Very likely," said the farmer; "I was never up the country there. And when are you going?"
"Now, directly."
"Now? In August? Well then, I wish you joy of the fever," said the farmer, laughing, drank the glass of cider which he had called for, and went off up the street.
The brewer meanwhile ordered some beer, growled something about nonsensical stuff, fever, fiddlestick, old women's tales, and so on, and then wandered off with his comrades higher up into the town.
"Well," said the shoemaker, at last, stopping near a shoemaker's workshop—"if that isn't curious; I begin to think that all the shoemakers in Cincinnati are confectioners. Only look now at the gingerbread and sugarcandy in that window there, a whole lot of it; the few pairs of shoes only seem to be hung beside by way of ornament."
"A pretty sort of ornament, indeed," grinned the tailor. "The shoemaker is right, though; honeycakes and leather must agree well together here; but perhaps it isn't a shoemaker's."