Well, well, well, everything is so uncertain." At last he said: "I believe I'll do it .-- A man will just rot, here.

My house my yard, everything around me, in fact, shows' that I am becoming one of these cattle--and I used to be thrifty in other times." He was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look that made him seem older.

He left the stile, entered that part of his house which was the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went into the kitchen.

His wife was there, constructing some dried apple pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying hard not to sop over a finger-mark that divided the pan through the middle--for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro woman was busy cooking, at a vast fire-place.

Shiftlessness and poverty reigned in the place.
"Nancy, I've made up my mind.