Scipio is a very enterprising and ingenious lad.
Colonel Coffin's boy leaned over the fence one day and gave to me his impressions of Scipio, a lad about fourteen years old: "Yes, me and him are right well acquainted now; he knows more'n I do, and he's had more experience.

Bill says his father used to be a robber (Smith, by the way, is a deacon in the Presbyterian church, and a very excellent lawyer), and that he has ten million dollars in gold buried in his cellar, along with a whole lot of human bones--people he's killed.

And he says his father is a conjurer, and that he makes all the earthquakes that happen anywheres in the world.

The old man'll come home at night, after there's been an earthquake, all covered with perspiration and so tired he kin hardly stand.

Bill says it's such hard work.
"And Bill tole me that once when a man came around there trying to sell lightning-rods his father got mad and et him--et him right up; and he takes bites out of everybody he comes acrost.
"That's what Bill tells me.