“Wall, guess I will,” said he, advancing a few steps toward the parlor door.  Then suddenly halting, he added, more to himself than to the negro, “Darned if I don’t go the hull figger, and send in my card as they do to Boston.”

So saying, he drew from his pocket an embossed card, and bending his knee for a table, he wrote with sundry nourishes, “Mr. Joel Slocum, Esq., Slocumville, Massachusetts.”

“There, hand that to your boss,” said he, “and tell him I’m out in the entry.”  At the same time he stepped before the hat-stand, rubbing up his oily hair, and thinking “Mr. Joel Slocum would make an impression anywhere.”

“Who is it, Ben ?” whispered Carrie.

“Dunno, miss,” said the negro, passing the card to his master, and waiting in silence for his orders.

“Mr. Joel Slocum, Esq., Slocumville, Massachusetts,” slowly read Mr. Livingstone, wondering where he had heard that name before.

“Who?” simultaneously asked Carrie and Anna, while their mother looked wonderingly up.

Instantly John Jr. remembered ’Lena’s love-letter, and anticipating fun, exclaimed, “Show him in, Ben—­show him in.”

While Ben is showing him in, we will introduce him more fully to our readers, promising that the picture is not overdrawn, but such as we saw it in our native state.  Joel belonged to that extreme class of Yankees with which we sometimes, though not often meet.  Brought up among the New England mountains, he was almost wholly ignorant of what really belonged to good manners, fancying that he knew everything, and sneering at those of his acquaintance who, being of a more quiet turn of mind, were content to settle down in the home of their fathers, caring little or nothing for the world without.  But as for him, “he was bound,” he said, “to see the elephant, and if his brothers were green enough to stay tied to their mother’s apron strings, they might do it, but he wouldn’t.  No, sir! he was going to make something of himself.”

To effect this, about two years before the time of which we are speaking, he went to Boston to learn the art of daguerreotype-taking, in which he really did seem to excel, returning home with some money, a great deal of vanity, and a strong propensity to boast of what he had seen.  Recollections of ’Lena, his early, and, as he sentimentally expressed it, “his undying, all-enduring” love, still haunted him, and at last he determined upon a tour to Kentucky, purchasing for the occasion a rather fantastic suit, consisting of greenish pants, blue coat, red vest, and yellow neck-handkerchief.  These he laid carefully by in his trunk until he reached Lexington, where he intended stopping for a time, hanging out a naming sign, which announced his presence and capabilities.