"I have knowed it sence allus-ago," he said; "Maw she used to read it to me out of a book with pictures." It is the first time he has spoken of his mother,--I hear from the other boys that he lost her quite recently. "Then your mother had learning?" I inquired. "She never got any inside a school-house," he replied; "but her great-grandpaw he had a sight of learning, and when he was a' old man, too feeble to do anything but set by the fire, he teached her how to read and write and figger, and was so proud of her being a scholar that when he come to die he left her what books he had,--there is several, all yallow and crumbly. One is a Bible; but the one I like is this-here about Christian and the devils. I used to lay and look at it by the hour, and learnt to read a-trying on it." This is most interesting as being another proof that the early settlers of this country were men of an education impossible to their descendants. It also helps to account for Nucky's remarkable mentality. He grasps a thing almost before it is spoken, has only to read over his lessons once, and remembers the stories I tell and read with surprising minuteness. _Wednesday._ I suppose I might have expected some ill effects from the hero-tales. When I went down to inspect the stable-lot this morning, I found three barn cats writhing in their death agonies, and Jason galloping off on a stick-horse, brandishing a shinny-bat. His explanation that he was Bellerophon, the stick Pegasus, and the cats the three heads of the Chimæra failed to mollify me. I gave him his first taste of "the rod," and did not "spar'" it. Evidently the child has a poetic imagination, which must not be permitted to run riot. X ABOUT MOTHERS _Saturday Night._ The little Salyers, while really fond of one another, have queer ways sometimes of showing it. This afternoon Keats called up wearily from the back yard, where for eight hours he had been carrying water and keeping up fires for the wash-girls, to Hen in the doorway, "What time is it, son?" to receive the affectionate reply, "Time all dogs was dead,--haint you sick?" To-night, sitting around our lamp, eating peppermint candy, the boys got to talking about their mothers, living or dead,--Keats and Hen of course about Nervesty, Taulbee, Killis and Hosea about their good mothers at home, Geordie and Absalom about theirs who is married again and lives in Virginia, and Philip, Joab, Iry and Jason about theirs who are dead. Nucky alone did not talk,--it seems impossible for him to speak of his mother.