“Ah, Mr Slick,” said he, patting me on the shoulder, “this is the true philosophy of life. But how is it with your disposition for fun, into which you enter with all your heart, that you have such a store of ‘wise saws.’ How in the world did you ever acquire them? for your time seems to have been spent more in the active pursuits of life than in meditation. Excuse me, I neither undervalue your talent nor power of observation, but the union does not seem quite natural, it is so much out of the usual course of things.”
“Well,” sais I, “Doctor, you have been enough in the woods to know that a rock, accidentally falling from a bank into a brook, or a drift-log catching cross-ways of the stream, will often change its whole course, and give it a different direction; haven’t you? Don’t you know that the smallest and most trivial event often contains colouring matter enough in it to change the whole complexion of our life? For instance, one Saturday, not long before I left school, and when I was a considerable junk of a boy, father gave me leave to go and spend the day with Eb Snell, the son of our neighbour old Colonel Jephunny Snell. We amused ourselves catching trout in the mill-pond, and shooting king-fishers, about the hardest bird there is to kill in all creation, and between one and the other sport, you may depend we enjoyed ourselves first-rate. Towards evenin’ I heard a most an awful yell, and looked round, and there was Eb shoutin’ and screamin’ at the tip eend of his voice, and a jumpin’ up and down, as if he had been bit by a rattlesnake.
“‘What in natur is the matter of you, Eb?’ sais I. ‘What are you a makin’ such an everlastin’ touss about?’ But the more I asked, the more he wouldn’t answer. At last, I thought I saw a splash in the water, as if somebody was making a desperate splurging there, and I pulled for it, and raced to where he was in no time, and sure enough there was his little brother, Zeb, just a sinkin’ out of sight. So I makes a spring in after him in no time, caught him by the hair of his head, just as he was vamosing, and swam ashore with him. The bull-rushes and long water-grass was considerable thick there, and once or twice I thought in my soul I should have to let go my hold of the child, and leave him to save my own life, my feet got so tangled in it; but I stuck to it like a good fellow, and worked my passage out with the youngster.
“Just then, down came the women folk and all the family of the Snells, and the old woman made right at me, as cross as a bear that has cubs, she looked like a perfect fury.
“‘You good-for-nothin’ young scallowag,’ said she, ‘is that the way you take care of that poor dear little boy, to let him fall into the pond, and get half drowned?’
“And she up and boxed my ears right and left, till sparks came out of my eyes like a blacksmith’s chimney, and my hat, which was all soft with water, got the crown knocked in in the scuffle, and was as flat as a pancake.
“‘What’s all this,’ sais Colonel Jephunny, who came runnin’ out of the mill. ‘Eb,’ sais he, ‘what’s all this?’
“Well, the critter was so frightened he couldn’t do nothin’, but jump up and down, nor say a word, but ‘Sam, Sam!’
“So the old man seizes a stick, and catchin’ one of my hands in his, turned to, and gave me a most an awful hidin’. He cut me into ribbons a’most.
“‘I’ll teach you,’ he said, ‘you villain, to throw a child into the water arter that fashin.’ And he turned to, and at it agin, as hard as he could lay on. I believe in my soul he would have nearly killed me, if it hadn’t a been for a great big nigger wench he had, called Rose. My! what a slashin’ large woman, that was; half horse, half alligator, with a cross of the mammoth in her. She wore a man’s hat and jacket, and her petticoat had stuff enough in it to make the mainsail of a boat. Her foot was as long and as flat as a snow shoe, and her hands looked as shapeless and as hard as two large sponges froze solid. Her neck was as thick as a bull’s, and her scalp was large and woolly enough for a door-mat. She was as strong as a moose, and as ugly too; and her great-white pointed teeth was a caution to a shark.