The magnificent peacock would wander off two miles, choosing the railroad track for his rambles, and loved to light on Si Evans's barn; then a boy must be detailed to recover the prize bird, said boy depending on a reward.

His modest-hued consort would seek the deep hedges back of a distant swamp.
Friends would come from a distance to surprise and cheer me in my lonely retreat just at the time that the butter must positively be made, while the flowers were choking for water, smothered with weeds, "pus'ley," of course, pre-eminent.

Then a book agent would appear, blind, but doubly persistent, with a five-dollar illustrated volume recounting minutely the Johnstown horror.

And one of my dogs would be apt at this crisis to pursue and slay a chicken or poison himself with fly-paper.

Every laboring man for miles around would come with an air of great importance to confidentially warn me against every other man that could be employed, with the stereotyped phrase in closing: "Well, whatever you do" (as if I might be left to do anything) "don't hire John Smallpate or Bill Storer.