"Possible! Well, now, ma'am, I should have guessed you'd been raised a purty middling awful long time afore that, to look at you: but, as you say, the 'squire's tall enough now, I calkilate, and so is all his family, for that matter; for Longfellow Backwoodsley, of Kiwigittyquag, measures six foot three in natur's stockings, and his sister Boadicea is but an inch and a half shorter. What family has the 'squire, did you say? Why, mighty near a dozen, I calkilate. Let's see: there's Travelout Backwoodsley, the oldest, he was the squatter as went to Tennessee; Longfellow, as I told you about, an awful smart gunner and racoon-catcher he is; Gumbleton, that is considerable of a lawyer in York State: Hoister, as went to sea; my ould woman as is to be, Boadicea; Increase-and-Multiply, the schoolmaster in Connecticut; Brandywine, what keeps the Rock of Columbia hotel at Boston, and a mighty powerful log-tavern it is as you'll see in a year's march; Leandish, that has the plate-house at Hoboken; Skinner, what set up the leather and finding store in Kentucky: I some think that's the tote, but four or five squeakers, squealers, younkers, whelps, and rubbish, that keeps about the ould log-house at home as yet. Pray how ould's your wife, 'squire? and where was she raised?" "I suppose," said the physician, taking no notice of this question, "that Master Backwoodsley is growing rich, and likes his settlement, by his not coming back to England." "Oh yaas! he conducts well, and likes his location," was the reply. "He bought at a good lay first, and then filled it with betterments, and farming trade, and creturs, and helps, and niggers, at an awful smart outlay of the dollars, I calkilate; but he has got along considerable well for all that. For sartain he is the yellow flower of the forest for prosperity. As for coming back, he used to say, when the war had a closure he would go to the ould country, and bring away the plunder he left behind; but about last fall the ague give him a purty particular smart awful shaking, and put him in an unhandsome fix, so the journey wouldn't convene. So one day, as I was a-looking over my snake-fence at Rams-Babylon, almost partly opposite to his clearing, what doos I see, but the 'squire coming along the road at a jouncing pace on his Narragansett mar, what is a real smasher at a trotting, and then he pulled up close to the zig-zag, and I stuck myself atop of a stake, and we held a talk. Says the 'squire, says he, 'Son-in-law Spanker P. Pokehorn as is to be'--my name's Anthony Spanker Pendleton Pokehorn, but he always shorts it,--'Son-in-law Spanker P. Pokehorn, I'll tell you what it is,--I guess I'm getting ould now, and more than that, I've a desp'ut ugly ague, what has made me quite froughy and brash to what I was, so that I should take two good blows of my fist to bring down a beef-cretur; which doosn't ought to be, when a man's only sixty. Now, you see, as I can't go to get in my debits and plunder from the ould