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Uncle John and I, being now very near Illinois, where
resided a distant relative of ours, determined to pay him a
visit. This person was much like uncle Tommy in his
leather-stocking propensities, but in no other respects; except
that he was, at first, a squatter, and had escaped on
some occasions, being scalped by the Indians. Once, too,
he escaped an ambuscade as he descended the Ohio
river with several other young men in a boat. Incautiously
approaching too near the bank, our relative was saved from
death by being in the act of bending to his oar at the flash
of the Indian rifles; for their balls, barely passing over his
back, struck the breast of a comrade, who fell dead at his
side. But, before the enemy could reload, the boat was
rowed beyond their reach. And so our friend lived, and
ever since had kept on growing till he now had become a
venerable and patriarchal Sucker, counting some sixty-five
concentric circles in his earthly vegetation.

Our way led through successive and beautiful little prairies,
separated by rich bottom lands of heavy timber and
other interposing woody districts—the trees being all magnificently
glorious in the autumnal colours of their dense
foliage. No artificial dyes rival the scarlet, the crimson,
the orange, the brown, of the sylvan dresses—giant robes

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and scarfs, hung with indescribable grandeur and grace,
over the rough arms and rude trunks of the forest!

And voices enough of bird, and beast, and insect, and
reptile, rose at our approach from the bosom of the wavy
grass, to break the solitude of the treeless plains; but, on
entering a district of wood, the uproar of tones, voices,
shrieks, hisses, barkings, and a hundred other nameless
cries, was deafening! It was bewildering! How like the
enchanted hills and groves of the Arabian Tales! Indeed,
had a penalty awaited our looking around, we should have
become stone, or stump, or paroquet, or squirrel, a thousand
times over and over, much to our surprise and mortification!
The bewildering tumult assailing him, on entering the solemn
dark of primitive oriental forests, must have suggested
to the Magician of the Thousand and One Nights, some
of the charms and witcheries and incantations that entranced
our first years of boyhood and dreams! To the elfish notes
of four-footed and creeping goblins and winged and gay
sprites, were added the rustle of fresh fallen leaves, the
crackling of brush-wood, the rattling of branch and bush,
the strange creaking of great trees, rubbing in amity their
arms and boughs, and the wailing and moaning of fitful
winds; and this formed our sinless Babel.

Under the most favourable arrangement of lungs, and
larynx and ears, conversation is a labour in such groves
and meadows; but, ah! my dear friend, if one's comrade
is deaf! or still worse if he is a modest man of the muttery
and whispery genus! and hearing uncommonly
sharp himself, takes for granted you hear ditto! True, if
you like to do talking, and the other hearing, that is the
very thing; but alas! our escort in this episodial trip,
who was a Mr. Mealymouth, was even more desirous of
talking than hearing! And what made it more awful, it
was not possible to answer him in the “Amen-at-a-venture”
mode; for most of Mr. Mealymouth's queries, which were

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numerous as a pedlar's from the land of guesses, admitted not
the mere answer yes or no, but demanded explanatory replies
like those of Professor Didactic. He asked to find out what
you knew, and not to be answered.

Uncle John quickly contrived to shuffle out of this scrape,
and with a most unchristian design to take revenge for the
razor affair; but then he ought not to have paid back with
so terrible an interest. Nay, he lagged just in our rear,
every now and then switching my creature, till the huzzy—
(a lady horse)—feared to quit the side of the escort's horse—
(a horse-horse)—and so kept on even a head with him,
pace for pace, trot for trot, shuffle for shuffle; her eyes
strained backward, her ears pointed and tremulous, and
her heels in the panlo-ante-future tense of being-nearly-about-a-going-to-kick;—
while I, completely snared and
in-for-it, could be seen, all eye and ear, with my neck
away out forward to catch the sense of Mr. Mealymouth
muttering and whispering some half-articulate question
direct or indirect, thus:

“Well—Carlt—powerful—don't—allow?”

“Si-i-i-r?” at the top of my voice to provoke him to a
higher pitch.

“Most powerful good meet—reckon—dont—?”

“Oh! yes, rather lean, however,—it wasn't stall fed—
think it was?”—(I thought he alluded to the beefsteak at
breakfast.)

“Meetin—meetin—convoc—hard heerin—allow?”

“The leaves rattle so—oh! yes, noble set of good men.”

“Mr. Carlton—allow—Mr. Seymour—ain't he?”

“Yes!—no!” And turning round I bellowed out;—
“Hullow! Uncle John, ride up, Mr. Mealymouth wants
you!”

“Road too narrow—'fraid of things getting rubbed in
my saddle-bags,”—replied Uncle J.

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Here I politely made a movement to fall in the rear and
give up my privilege; but my skittish jade, catching sight
of Uncle John's upraised switch, snorted, and cocking back
her ears trotted me up again to the place of punishment—
while from Uncle John's face, it was plain enough he was
indulging in a malicious inward laugh. Nay, although I
hate to tell it, he actually put up his finger against his
cheek and made signs of shaving!—a pretty way for a
pious man of returning good for evil!

I shall not detail all my misapprehensions nor contrivances
to avoid answering at hazard, as for instance, suddenly
crying out, when expected to reply to a query—
“See! see! that deer!”—or—“Hurraw! for the turkeys
there!”—or—“Smell cowcumbers—guess a rattlesnake's
near?” Nor shall I relate how, at last, I did get behind
Uncle John; and how Mr. M. fell back and rode with him;
I ever and anon admonishing Mr. Seymour to take care of
his saddle-bags;—nor how Uncle John was attacked with
a very uncommon and alarming stiffness, rendering it
necessary for him to dismount and walk a whole mile;
and how he over took us at the ford of the Wabash, Mr.
M. fortunately volunteering to lead his horse; but I hasten
to say that about evening we reached the house of a friend
who had invited us to call on him, and that here, to crown
the pleasures of the day, we found our host Mr. Softspeech
was even more inarticulate in speech than Mr. Mealymouth
himself.

Uncle John now proposed to bury the hatchet, and form
a league of offence and defence; hence, after due deliberation
while out washing and wiping, it was concluded
that we both sit together, and always in front of the fire;
thus keeping our innocent tormentors each at opposite sides
of the chimney place. For first, this would do them a service
by compelling them to talk out, it seeming impossible,
if they designed speaking to one another at all, to do it

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long in a mutter; and secondly, if we were assailed by
either enemy right or left, we should have four ears to defend
and aid us, instead of two, and so we could together
compound a pretty fair answer:—this judicious arrangement
made us nearly equal to a Siamese twins.

And yet, one important matter was found to have been
overlooked—the effect on our risibility. For when the
two cousins of Simongosoftly began a gentle stir of murmuring
lips, and both found, in despite of keen ears, that
articulate language must be used; and when evident vexation
from their reciprocal mutters and mistakes arose, and
they looked at one another in a style like saying, “Blast
you, why don't you speak louder”—Oh! dear reader,
would you have believed it. Uncle John all at once laughed
right out!—and then you know I couldn't help it—could I?

But then, the old gentleman turned it so adroitly, thus:

“Mr. Carlton,”—said he—“whenever I think of that
trick you served me about the razor I can't help laughing.”

And of course that affair was narrated; and we had the
satisfaction of finding our two friends could laugh like
Christians, if they could not talk like them. And truly
man is pretty much of a laughing animal—and certainly
none deserves to be more laughed at; although for this
vile sin of muttering, and grumbling, and whispering out
words with a fixed jaw, and eyes half-shut up like a dreamy
cat in the sunshine, words, that should be articulated in
the sweet vocality of human speech, the whole abominable
tribe of Mealymouths deserves not only to be laughed and
hooted at, but actually well scourged.

Well, we paid our visit to our Sucker relative; and then,
after the two worthy old gentlemen had exhausted their
reminiscences, and edified one another with adventures in
hunting, and fishing, and camping out, and voyaging, and
so on, we bade farewells; and Uncle John and myself, but
without an escort, took the homeward trail. The accidents
in the path belong to the next chapter.

p111-391

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