“One of your emetics, Doctor.  I came out at the same door I went in at.  Now, doctus, doctior, doctissimus, I am fair game on this point, so blaze away with everything but your saddle-bags, and I will laugh with the rest of you.”

A good-natured laugh welcomed this coming down.

“Well,” replied the doctor, “there can’t be much more said.”

“I should like to know, young man,” remarked Uncle Josh, “whether you raly got into the college, I should.”

“Well, Mr. Burnett, I raly did not, I didn’t,” mimicking Uncle Josh.

“What did you do, badinage apart?”

“I took a good outside look at the buildings, which was improving; called on your friends Dr. Nutting and Rev. Beriah Green, who asked me what church I belonged to, and who was my instructor in Latin.”

“What reply did you make?”

“What could I say?  I didn’t hear the first; and as to the second, I couldn’t bring reproach upon you, and so I said I had never had one.  You must own, Doctor, that I showed great tenderness for your reputation.”

“You certainly did me a kindness.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“I should raly like to know,” said Uncle Josh, “what you are thanking the Doctor for, I should.”

“Well, go on.”

“I went off,” continued Bart.  “The fact is, I thought that that retreat of the sciences might hold that little learning, which is a dangerous thing—­as you used to not quote exactly—­and I thought it prudent to avoid that ‘Pierian spring.’”

“What is the young man talking about now?” inquired Uncle Josh.  “I would raly like to know, I would.”

“I must ask the Doctor to explain,” answered Bart.  “I was referring to one of his old drinking-places, where, according to him, the more one drank the soberer he grew.  You would not fancy that tipple, would you?”

“You see, Uncle Josh,” said the Doctor, laughing, “what comes of a young man’s going a week to college.”

“The young man didn’t know anything at all, before,” declared Uncle Josh, “and he seems to know less now, amazingly.”

This was Uncle Josh’s sincere opinion, and was received with a shout of laughter, in which Bart heartily joined.  Indeed, it was his first sincere laugh for many a day.

Johnson asked him “whether he went to the Ohio river,” and being answered in the affirmative, asked him “by what route he went, and what he saw.”

Uncle Jonah, as Bart usually called him, was one of his very few recognized friends, and asked in a way that induced him to make a serious answer.

“I walked the most of the way there, and all the way back.  I went by way of Canton, Columbus, Dayton, and so to Cincinnati, and returned the same way.”

“What do you think of that part of the State which you saw?”

“Unquestionably we have the poorest part of it.  As our ancestors landed on the most desolate part of the continent, so we took the worst part of Ohio.  If you were to see the wheat-fields of Stark, or the corn on the Scioto, and the whole of the region about Xenia and Dayton, and on the Miami, you would want to emigrate.”