"'Poor fellow!' said Elsie, her sympathy for the anticipated sufferings of her young protegé driving from her mind all disapprobation of the hard-hearted perverseness that caused them, 'did they keep you long in that dismal, dreadful place?' 'You may say so,' replied the boy; 'they kept me down there till I was more tired of it than ever I had been of the grammar-school. I don't know how long it was, but I was mighty tired of it. Dickens, goody, but I was dry! I was in such a hurry to get down, that I forgot I should want water as well as gingerbread: I eat up all my gingerbread, but I was as dry as ever. Goody, you don't know what it is to be dry! I was always thinking and dreaming of springs, and wells, and pumps, and the big Delaware there, and even the ditches and gutters. But I held out as well as I could, till I thought we were clear of that hateful old England; and then I hollaed to 'em to let me out; but they did not hear me at all. There was a power of big baskets, that were rolled all about me; for you must know, a ship never holds still a minute at a time, but is always pitching and tumbling, now up and now down, like a cart in a corn-field; so the baskets rolled all over me; I thought they would have squeezed the life out of me, and I could not get out from among them. So there I pulled and hollaed, till I was tired of it, or fell asleep; but no good came of it. I tell you what, goody, I would have taken a thumping for a drink of water! but there was no coming at it. I bawled out, "Water! water!" and "Fire! fire!" but it was no good; nobody heard me; and it set me to crying, to think what a hard time I had of it. Well, I reckon!--I was scraping about among the baskets, and some gave way, they were so rotten. I scraped among the willow twigs, and got my hand among the straw, without so much as thinking what I was about, when, all of a sudden, I found I had hold of a glass bottle. "Oho!" said I; it was a great long-necked thing, with wax over the cork. I did not mind that; I knocked the neck off against the basket, and, good dickens! such a fizzing and spluttering as it made! It foamed all over my face, and some fell on my lips, and it tasted good, like cider--you may be sure I drained it.' 'It was wine!' cried Elsie. 'I reckon,' said the juvenal; 'and I reckon it made my head sing, too!' he exclaimed, smacking his lips over the grateful recollection; 'such stuff as that I never tasted before. It made me feel good,--all comical, and merry, and ticklish-like,--I don't know how, but all as if I was rolling up hill and down hill,--huzzy-buzzy, sleek, and grand! Then I seemed as if I was dreaming, but such merry dreams, and talking, and roaring, and laughing; and then some of them opened the traps, and dragged me out; and then I had a tussle with some of them, for I felt big enough to fight them all; and then somehow I fell fast asleep.'