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no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and

pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles;

so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us,

and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how I

come to be here. So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it.

Then it was most daylight, and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with

Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my

name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck

waked up, I says: ssssssssss

"Can you spell, Buck?"

"Yes," he says.

"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.

"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.

"All right," says I, "go ahead."

"G-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n -- there now," he says.

"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't no

slouch of a name to spell -- right off without studying."

I set it down, private, because somebody might want me to spell it, next, and

so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it.

It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen no

house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. It didn't

have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string,

but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in a town. There warn't no bed

in the parlor, not a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in

them. There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks

was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with

another brick; sometimes they washed them over with red water-paint that they

call Spanish-brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass dog-irons that

could hold up a saw-log. There was a clock on the middle of the mantel-piece,

with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a

round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum

swing behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when

one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good

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