and said, “Oh, you pore, innicent bairn, and how do yez ken all this? and how did yez know that Misther Payterson kapes a tiger at all, at all, begorra!” Another young lady said, “Dutchy, I reckon yore daddy is a right smart cunning old fox!” “Madame,” replied I, indignantly, “my father is no fox, but a minister of the Gospel.”  “Oh, this bye is the son of a praste,” screamed the loveliest girl in all Missouri.  “Indade, I misthrusted the little scamp.  Och! oh and where is me brooch?  I thought all the time the little divvil was afther something.  Thieves!  Murther!” Confusion in pandemonium now reigned supreme.  For one precious moment the air seemed full of long-legged stockings and delicate hands and purses.  Luckily, the brooch was found and peace restored at once.  And Rose said, “Oh, girls, how could you!” and she begged my pardon and said they did not mean it.  And then I made myself very useful and agreeable to these lovely maids, lacing their shoes and dusting their chamber, and right gallantly did I serve them until evening.

After supper reappeared my evil genius in the person of the landlord, who took me out to the woodshed.  “Dutchy, I have decided to adopt you as my only son; have you ever bucked a wood saw?” said he, and a sardonic leer distorted his evil features.  After I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, “Sir, know ye not that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon temple?” “Ha!  Ha!” laughed the villain, “get busy now, son, and if by morning this wood has not been cut, you will go minus your breakfast.”  Thereupon he locked me in.

Caught as a rat in a trap, I had no alternative but to comply with this man’s outrageous demands.  Despairingly I plied that abominable instrument of torture, the national bucksaw of America.  This is the only American institution I could never accustom myself to.  I have endured bucking bronchos in New Mexico, I have bucked the tiger in Arizona, but to buck a wood-saw—­perish the thought!  Sore and weary, I lay down in a corner of the shed on some hay and fell asleep.  I dreamed that I heard screams of women, mingled with song and laughter, and through it all the noise of music and dancing.  Then the dream changed into a horrible nightmare in the shape of a big sawhorse which kicked at me and threatened me with hard labor.

Toward morning, when the door was opened and a drunken ruffian entered, I awoke from my troubled slumbers.  “Hi, Dutchy, and have yez any tin?” he threatened.  “Kind sir,” I replied, “when I departed for the West I left all my wealth behind me.”  Verily, now I was proving myself the worthy scion of valiant men, who had laid aside hauberk, sword, and lance, taken up the Bible and stole, and thenceforth fought only with the weapon of Samson, the strong!

“And so yez are, by special appointment, chamberlain to the gurruls by day, and ivver sawing wood at nighttime!  Bedad!  I’ll shpile the thrick for Misther Payterson, the thaving baste, and take this little greenhorn out of his clutches and sind him about his business.”  With these words, he opened the door for me and I escaped.