Then, again, he would stop and mop his bald head with a big red handkerchief and say, a little tremor of irritation in his voice: 'Tired! who wouldn't be tired with a big elephant like you on his back all day?
I'd be 'shamed o' myself t' set there an' let an old man carry me from Dan to Beersheba.

Git out now an' shake yer legs.' I was the small boy and I remember it was always a great relief to get out of the basket, and having run ahead, to lie in the grass among the wild flowers, and jump up at him as he came along.
Uncle Eb had been working for my father five years before I was born.

He was not a strong man and had never been able to carry the wide swath of the other help in the fields, but we all loved him for his kindness and his knack of story-telling.

He was a bachelor who came over the mountain from Pleasant Valley, a little bundle of clothes on his shoulder, and bringing a name that enriched the nomenclature of our neighbourhood.

It was Eben Holden.
He had a cheerful temper and an imagination that was a very wilderness of oddities.