“After a great many cares, and trials, and dangers, and often after an absence of two years, the fur-hunter comes back with his load of skins; and a pretty figure he is. The clothes he carried with him are worn out, and he is now attired in the skins of various wild beasts. On his head you see the grizzled fur of a raccoon, with his tail hanging down behind. His coat is made of a wolf’s skin, and his vest of the skin of an otter. But his trowsers are the drollest part of his attire. They are made of a bear’s skin, and each leg looks like a great, shaggy, black dog, standing upright! Altogether, the hunter is a most curious object. He looks like three or four wild animals all sewed into one! “What a great variety of adventures has this man met with in his wanderings of two years. How many pleasant stories could he tell, if he would sit down of a long winter night, and recount all that happened to him; all about the bears, the foxes, the wolves, and the wild Indians that he saw. How much this poor man must have suffered; what toil, hunger, thirst, danger and privation; and all this, that master Philip might have a hat; all this to get furs to make hats of. “The wool and fur being obtained, these are prepared by the hatter, who, in the first place, makes a sort of cap, shaped something like a sugar-loaf. This is then soaked in hot water, and, being put upon a block, the crown is made of a proper shape. The whole is stiffened with gum, colored, dressed, put in boxes, and sent to the hat-seller. The price paid for me was two dollars. Philip has worn me for about a year, but I am in a sad condition. The hole in my crown was made by a stick, which went through me one day when Philip threw me at a red squirrel on the fence. The rent on my brim was caused by a saucy fellow, that tried to pull me off one day; but I chose to be torn, rather than see Philip insulted by having his hat knocked off; for, though the boy has his faults, I like him better than anybody else.” Such is the story of the hat. My object in giving it to you is, to show, that the commonest article of daily use has its history, if we will only inquire into it. CHAPTER IV. _Arrival at my Uncle’s.--The Village.--Bill Keeler.--My first Day at School.--Trouble._ I must now return to the story of myself. The morning after I left the little tavern where I discovered how milk was obtained, we proceeded on our journey, and at evening arrived at my uncle’s house. It was an old-fashioned building, painted red, with a large sign swinging in front, upon one side of which was the picture of a stout barn-yard cock, and on the other side was the head of a bull. So my uncle’s tavern went by the name of the “Cock and Bull.”