“Less see; who have we next?  Ah, Franklin!  Benjamin Franklin.  He was one of the old original pioneers, I think.  I disremember exactly what he is celebrated for, but I believe it was flying a—­oh, yes! flying a kite, that’s it.  The publisher mentioned it.  He was out one day flying a kite, you know, like boys do nowadays, and while she was flickering up in the sky, and he was giving her more string, an apple fell off a tree and hit him on the head, and then he discovered the attraction of gravitation, I think they call it.  Smart, wasn’t it?  Now, if you or me’d a been hit, it’d just a made us mad, like as not, and set us a-cussing.  But men are so different.  One man’s meat’s another man’s pison.  See what a double chin he’s got.  No beard on him, either, though a goatee would have been becoming to such a round face.  He hasn’t got on a sword, and I reckon he was no soldier; fit some when he was a boy, maybe, or went out with the home-guard, but not a regular warrior.  I ain’t one myself, and I think all the better of him for it.

“Ah, here we are!  Look at that!  Smith and Pocahontas!  John Smith.  Isn’t that just gorgeous?  See how she kneels over him and sticks out her hands while he lays on the ground and that big fellow with a club tries to hammer him up.  Talk about woman’s love!  There it is.  Modocs, I believe.  Anyway, some Indians out West there somewheres; and the publisher tells me that Shacknasty, or whatever his name is, there, was going to bang old Smith over the head with that log of wood, and this girl here, she was sweet on Smith, it appears, and she broke loose and jumped forward, and says to the man with the stick, ’Why don’t you let John alone?  Me and him are going to marry; and if you kill him, I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live,’ or words like them; and so the man, he give it up, and both of them hunted up a preacher and were married, and lived happily ever afterward.  Beautiful story, ain’t it?  A good wife she made him, too, I bet, if she was a little copper-colored.  And don’t she look just lovely in that picture?  But Smith appears kinder sick.  Evidently thinks his goose is cooked; and I don’t wonder, with that Modoc swooping down on him with such a discouraging club.

“And now we come to—­to—­ah—­to Putnam—­General Putnam.  He fought in the war, too; and one day a lot of ’em caught him when he was off his guard, and they tied him flat on his back on a horse, and then licked the horse like the very mischief.  And what does that horse do but go pitching down about four hundred stone steps in front of the house, with General Putnam laying there nearly skeered to death.  Leastways, the publisher said somehow that way, and I oncet read about it myself.  But he came out safe, and I reckon sold the horse and made a pretty good thing of it.  What surprises me is he didn’t break his neck; but maybe it was a mule, and they’re pretty sure-footed, you know.  Surprising what some of these men have gone through, ain’t it?