TOODLES.

THE QUARREL SCENE ABOUT THE AUC

TION BUSINESS.

SCENE II.- LANDSCAPE-VILLAGE IN

THE DISTANCE.

MRS. TOODLES (speaks outside). But, my dear Toodles.

Enter MR. TOCDLES, MRS. TOODLES following him.

TOODLES. Oh, don't dear Toodles meyou'll drive me mad-your conduct is scandalous in the extreme.

MRS. T. My dear Toodles, don't say so. TOODLES. But I will say so, Mrs. Toodles. What will become of us, with your passion of going to auctions, and buying everything you see, because it's cheap? I say, Mrs. Toodles, where's the money? and echo answers, where.

MRS. T. I'm sure, my dear Toodles, I lay it out to the best advantage.

TOODLES. You shall not squander and waste my means.

MRS. T. My dear, I buy nothing but what is useful.

TOODLES. Useful-useless you mean. I won't have my house turned into a hospital for invalid_furniture. At the end of the week I ask where's the money?-all gone too-spent in damned

nonsense.

MRS. T. My love, although they are of no use to you at present, we may want them, and how useful it will be to have them in the house.

TOODLES. Why, Mrs. T., the house is full already of damaged chairs, and dilapidated tables, sofas with one leg, washstands with two legs, chairs with three legs, and some without a leg to stand

upon.

MRS. T. I'm sure you can't find fault with the last bargain I bought. TOODLES. What is it?

MRS. T. A pair of crutches. TOODLES. A pair of crutches! What use are they to me, Mrs. T.?

MRS. T. No, not at present; but you might meet with an accident, and then how handy it will be to have them in the house.

TOODLES. Oh, here's a woman goes to an auction and buys a pair of crutches in anticipation that her husband will break his legs. But look what you did the

VOL. V.-W. H.

other day, when this railroad was finished out here, why curse me, if you did not buy forty-three wheelbarrows-some with wheels, and some without wheels; and then again, before this new system of police was introduced, we had watchmen, and watch-boxes-now our police have stars on their breasts, and the corporation abolished watch-boxes. They were all put up, at auction, and I'll be hanged if you didn't buy ninety-three watch-boxes.

MRS. T. Now, my dear Toodles, how unreasonable you are; you don't know but they will be wanted, and then how handy it will be to have them in the house.

TOODLES. That's your old excuse. We have wheelbarrows in the yard, watchboxes in the cellar, wheelbarrows and watch-boxes all over the house. The pigs eat out of the wheelbarrows, and the cows sleep in the watch-boxes.

MRS. T. Now, my dear Toodles, don't that prove their utility?

TOODLES. When I came home the other night, I tumbled into something and broke my shins. I called Jane to bring a light. I found myself in a watch-box. What was your last purchase? The other day I saw a cart before the door, and two men carrying into the house a door plate.

MRS. T. My dear Toodles

Mrs.

TOODLES. And the name of Thompson upon it. Thompson with a P. Toodles, if I were not innately a sober man, you would drive me to an extreme case of drinking. Well, what was your reason for buying the door-plate? "Toodles, my dear," says you, we may have a daughter, and that daughter may be a female-and live to the age of maturityand she may marry a man of the name of Thompson with a P-then, how handy it will be to have it in the house!

་་

MRS. T. And won't it, dear?

TOODLES. You had it stuck over the mantel-piece, and when I come down to breakfast or home to dinner, there's that odious name of Thompson looking me in the face.-If I had a daughter, and caught a man of the name of Thompson making love to her, I'd break his head with that door-plate.

MRS. T. But, my dear ToodlesTOODLES. Yes, Mrs. T., I say religiously, morally, sincerely and emphatically-damn Thompson!

20

THE BIG LIE.

A HUNTER'S STORY.

[WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, LL.D., born in Charles

ton, South Carolina, April 17, 1806; died there June

11, 1870. He was one of the most prolific writers of

America. A mere catalogue of his works in poetry,

fiction, drama, history, biography, criticism and miscel

dimensions, one containing peach brandy of mountain manufacture, the other the luscious honey from the mountain hives.

Supper over, and it is Saturday night. It is the night dedicated among the professional hunters to what is called "The Lying Camp.'

graphic, and his characters have considerable individuality. He is most successful in sketches of rude border life, in bustling, tumultuous action. . . . The shorter

stories of Mr. Simms are his best works. They have

unity, completeness and strength." Notwithstanding

his vast literary labors, Mr. Simms took an active part

in politics, and in 1846 missed, only by one vote, being

elected lieutenant-governor of his native State.]

The day's work was done, and a good day's work it was. We had bagged a couple of fine bucks and a fat doe; and now we lay camped at the foot of the "Balsam Range of mountains in North Carolina, preparing for our supper. We were a right merry group of seven-four professional hunters, and three amateurs, myself among the latter. There was Jim Fisher, Aleck Wood, Sam or Sharp Snaffles, alias "Yaou," and Nathan Langford, alias the "Pious.'

These were our professional hunters. Our amateurs may well continue nameless, as their achievements do not call for any present record.

There stood our tent pitched at the foot of the mountains, with a beautiful cascade leaping headlong toward us, and subsiding into a mountain runnel, and finally into a little lakelet, the waters of which, edged with perpetual foam, were as clear as crystal.

Our baggage-wagon, which had been sent round to meet us by trail routes through the gorges, stood near the tent, which was of stout army canvas.

That baggage-wagon held a variety of luxuries there was a barrel of the best bolted wheat flour; there were a dozen choice hams, a sack of coffee, a keg of sugar, a few thousand of cigars, and last, not least, a corpulent barrel of Western usquebaugh, vulgarly, "whiskey," to say nothing of a pair of demijohns of equal

do you mean by the Lying Camp,' Columbus?"

The explanation soon followed.

Saturday night is devoted by the mountaineers engaged in a camp-hunt, which sometimes contemplates a course of several weeks, to stories of their adventures objects of their chase, and the wild ex-"long yarns"-chiefly relating to the periences of their professional life. The hunter who naturally inclines to exaggeration is, at such a period, privileged to deal in all the extravagances of inventionnay he is required to do so! To be literal, or confine himself to the bald and naked truth, is not only discreditable, but a finable offence! He is, in such a case, made to swallow a long, strong, and difficult potation! He cannot be too extravagant in his incident; but he is also required to exhibit a certain degree of art in their use; and he thus frequently rises into a certain realm of fiction, the ingenuities of which are made to compensate for the exaggerations, as they do in the Arabian Nights and other Oriental romances.

This will suffice for explanation.

Nearly all our professional hunters assembled on the present occasion were tolerable raconteurs. They complimented Jim Fisher by throwing the raw deer-skin over his shoulders; tying the antlers of the buck with a red handkerchief over his forehead; seating him on the biggest boulder which lay at hand, and, sprinkling him with a stoup of whiskey, they christened him "The Big Lie" for the occasion. And in this character he complacently presided during the rest of the evening; till the company prepared for sleep, which was not till midnight, he was king of the feast.

It was the duty of the "Big Lie" to regulate proceedings, keep order, appoint the raconteurs severally, and admonish them when he found them foregoing their privileges, and narrating bald, naked and

your team.

Sam Snaffles swallowed his peach and honey at a gulp, hemmed thrice lustily, put himself into an attitude, and began as follows.

I shall adopt his language as closely as possible; but it is not possible, in any degree, to convey any adequate idea of his manner, which was admirably appropriate to the subject-matter. Indeed, the fellow was a born actor.

The "Jedge was the nom de guerre which the hunters had conferred upon me, looking, no doubt, to my venerable aspect -for I had travelled considerably beyond my teens-and the general dignity of my bearing.

"You see, Jedge," addressing me especially as the distinguished stranger, 'I'm a telling this hyar history of mine jest to please you, and I'll try to please you ef I kin. These fellows hyar have hearn it so often that they knows all about it jest as well as I do my own self, and they knows the truth of it all, and would swear to it afore any hunter's court in all the county, ef so be the affidavy was to be tooken in camp and on a Saturday night.

You see, then, Jedge, it's about a

| dozen or fourteen years ago, when I was a young fellow without much beard on my chin, though I was full grown as I am now-strong as a horse, ef not quite so big as a buffalo. I was then jest a-beginning my 'prenticeship to the hunting business, and looking to sich persons as the 'Big Lie' thar to show me how to take the track of b'ar, buck and painther.

"But I confess I weren't a-doing much. I hed a great deal to l'arn, and I reckon I miss'd many more bucks than I ever hit-that is, jest up to that time-"

"Look you, Yaou," said "Big Lie," interrupting him; you're gitting too close upon the etarnal stupid truth! All you've been a-saying is jest nothing but the naked truth, as I knows it. Jest crook your trail!'

And how's a man to lie decently onless you lets him hev a bit of truth to go upon? The truth's nothing but a peg in the wall that I hangs the lie upon. A ter a while I promise that you sha'n't see the peg.

Worm along, Yaou!"

"Well, Jedge, I warn't a-doing much among the bucks yet-jest for the reason that I was quite too eager in the scent a'ter a sartin doe! Now, Jedge, you never seed my wife-my Merry Ann, as I calls her; and ef you was to see her nowthough she's prime grit yit-you would never believe that, of all the womankind in all these mountains, she was the very yaller flower of the forest, with the reddest rose cheeks you ever did see, and sich a mouth, and sich bright curly hair, and so tall, and so slender, and so all over beautiful. O Lawd! when I thinks of it and them times, I don't see how 'twas possible to think of buck-hunting when thar was sich a doe, with sich eyes shining on me.

Well, Jedge, Merry Ann was the only da'ter of Jeff Hopson and Keziah Hopson, his wife, who was the da'ter of Squire Claypole, whose wife was Margery Clough, that lived down upon Pacolet river"

"Look you, Yaou, ain't you getting into them derned facts agin, eh?"

'Scuse

"I reckon I em, 'Big Lie.' me; I'll kiver the pegs direct-lie, one a'ter t'other. Whar was I? Ah! Oh! Well, Jedge, poor hunter and poor man-jest, you see, a squatter on the side of a leetle bit of a mountain close on to Columbus

Mills, at Mount Tryon, I was all the time on a hot trail a'ter Merry Ann Hopson. I went thar to see her a most every night, and sometimes I carried a buck for the old people, and sometimes a doeskin for the gal; and I do think, bad hunter as I then was, I pretty much kept the fam❜ly in deer meat through the whole winter.

66

Well, Jedge, though Jeff Hopson was glad enough to git my meat always, he didn't affection me as I did his da'ter. He was a sharp, close, money-loving old fellow, who was always considerate of the main chaince; and the old lady, his wife, who hairdly dare say her soul was her own, she jest looked both ways, as I may say, for Sunday, never giving a fair look to me or my chainces, when his eyes were sot on her. But 'twan't so with my Merry Ann. She hed the eyes for me from the beginning, and soon she hed the feelings; and, you see, Jedge, we sometimes did git a chaince, when old Jeff was gone from home, to come to a sort of onderstanding about our feelings; and the long and the short of it was that Merry Ann confessed to me that she'd like nothing better than to be my wife. She liked no other man but me.

66

Now, Jedge, a'ter that, what was a young fellow to do? That, I say, was the proper kind of incouragement. So I said, I'll ax your daddy.' Then she got scary, and said, 'Oh, don't, for somehow, Sam, I'm a-thinking daddy don't like you enough yit. Jest hold on a bit, and come often, and bring him venison, and try to make him laugh, which you kin do, you know, and a'ter a time you kin try him.' And so I did or rether I didn't. I put off the axing. I come constant. I brought venison all the time, and b'ar meat a plenty, a'most three days in every week.

"Well, Jedge, this went on for a long time, a'most the whole winter, and spring, and summer, till the winter begun to come in agin. I carried 'em the venison, and Merry Ann meets me in the woods, and we hes sich a pleasant time when we meets on them little odd chainces that I gits hot as thunder to bring the business to a sweet honey finish.

66

But Merry Ann keeps on scary, and she puts me off, ontil, one day, one a'ternoon, about sundown, she meets me in the woods, and she's all in a flusteration. And she ups and tells me how old John Grimstead, the old bachelor (a fellow

about forty years old, and the dear gal not yet twenty), how he's a'ter her, and bekaise he's got a good fairm, and mules and horses, how her daddy's giving him the open mouth encouragement. "Then I says to Merry Ann:

666

'You sees, I kain't put off no longer. I must out with it, and ax your daddy at onst." And then her scary fit

come on again, and she begs me not tonot just yit. But I swears by all the Hokies that I won't put off another day and so, as I haird the old man was in the house that very hour, I left Merry Ann in the woods, all in a trimbling, and I jist went ahead, detarmined to have the figure straight, whether odd or even.

"I was jubious; but I jist bolted into the house, as free and easy and bold as ef I was the very best customer that the old man wanted to see."

Here Yaou paused to renew his draught of peach and honey.

Well, Jedge, I put a bold face on the business, though my hairt was gitting up into my throat, and I was almost a-gasping for my breath, when I was fairly in the big room, and standing up before the old squaire. He was a-setting in his big squar hide-bottom'd arm-chair, looking like a jedge upon the bench jist about to send a poor fellow to the gallows. As he seed me come in, looking queer enough, I reckon, his mouth put on a sort of grin, which showed all his grinders, and he looked for all the world as ef he guessed the business I come about. But he said, good-natured enough,

"Well, Sam Snaffles, how goes it?'
"I said to myself,

"It's jest as well to git the worst at onst, and then thar'll be an eend of the oneasiness.' So I up and told him, in pretty soft, smooth sort of speechifying, as how I was mighty fond of Merry Ann, and she, I was a-thinking, of me, and that I jest come to ax ef I might hev Merry Ann for my wife.

"Then he opened his eyes wide, as ef he never ixpected to hear sich a proposal from me.

666

What!' says he. 'You?' "Jest so, squaire,' says I. 'Ef it pleases you to believe me, and to consider it reasonable, the axing."

"He sot quiet for a minit or more; then he gits up, knocks all the fire out of his pipe on the chimney, fills it, and lights it

agin, and then comes straight up to me, whar I was a-setting on the chair in front of him, and without a word he takes the collar of my coat betwixt the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and he

up, Sam Snaffles. Git up, ef

says: 666 'Git you please.

66

66

Well, I gits up, and he says: "Hyar. Come. Hyar.' “And with that he leads me right across the room to a big looking-glass that hung agin the partition wall, and thar he stops before the glass, facing it and holding me by the collar all the time. 'Now that looking-glass, Jedge, was about the biggest I ever did see. It was a'most three feet high, and a'most two feet wide, and it had a bright, broad frame, shiny like gold, with a heap of leetle figgers worked all round it. I reckon thar's no sich glass now in all the mountain country.

"Well, thar he hed me up, both on us standing in front of this glass, whar we could a-most see the whole of our full figgers from head to foot.

And when we hed stood thar for a minit or so, he says, quite solemn like : "Look in the glass, Sam Snaffles.' "So I looked.

'Well,' says I, 'I sees you, Squaire Hopson, and myself, Sam Snaffles.

Look good,' says he; obzarve well.' "Well, says I, I'm a-looking with all my eyes. I only sees what I tells you.'

666

But you don't obzarve,' says he. 'Looking and seeing's one thing,' says he, but obzarving's another. Now ob

round, too, and thar we stood full facing one another.

"Lawd! how I was riled! But I answered, quick :

666

"And why not, I'd like to know, Squaire Hopson? I ain't the handsomest man in the world, but I'm not the ugliest; and folks don't generally consider me at all among the uglies. I'm as tall a man as you, and as stout and strong, and as good a man o' my inches as ever stepped in shoe-leather. And it's enough to tell you, squaire, whatever you may think, that Merry Ann believes in me, and she's a way of thinking that I'm jest about the very pusson that ought to hev her.'

་

666

Merry Ann's thinking,' says he, don't run all fours with her fayther's thinking. I axed you, Sam Snaffles, to obzarve yourself in the glass. I telled you that seeing warn't edzactly obzarving. You seed only the inches; you seed that you hed eyes, and mouth, and nose, and the airms and legs of a man. But eyes and mouth, and legs and airms, don't make a man.

"Oh, they don't,' says I.

"No, indeed,' says he. 'I seed that you hed all them; but then I seed thar was one thing that you hedn't got.'

Jimini!' says I, mighty confused. 'What thing's a-wanting to me to make

me a man?

"Capital,' says he, and he lifted himself up and looked mighty grand.

666

666

་

Capital,' says I; and what's that?'
Thar air many kinds of capital,' says

he. Money's capital, for it kin buy
everything; house and lands is capital;
cattle and horses and sheep, when thar's
enough on 'em, is capital. And as I ob-
zarved you in the glass, Sam Snaffles, I
seed that capital was the very thing that
you wanted to make a man of you. Now,
I don't mean that any da'ter of mine
shall marry a pusson that's not a parfect
man. I obzarved you long ago, and seed
whar you was wanting. I axed about
you.
I axed your horse.'
"Axed my horse!' says I, pretty
nigh dumfoundered.

Yes; I axed your horse, and he said to me, "Look at me. I hain't got an ounce of spar' flesh on my bones. You kin count all my ribs. You kin lay the whole length of your airm betwixt any two on 'em, and it'll lie thar as snug as a black snake betwixt two poles of a log