Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net THE JUCKLINS +--------------------------------------+ | OPIE READ'S SELECT WORKS | | | | Old Ebenezer | | The Jucklins | | My Young Master | | A Kentucky Colonel | | On the Suwanee River | | A Tennessee Judge | | | |Works of Strange Power and Fascination| | | | Uniformly bound in extra cloth, gold | | tops, ornamental covers, uncut edges,| | six volumes in a box, | | $6.00 | | Sold separately, $1.00 each. | +--------------------------------------+ [Illustration] OPIE READ'S SELECT WORKS THE JUCKLINS A NOVEL BY OPIE READ Author of "Old Ebenezer," "My Young Master," "On the Suwanee River," "A Kentucky Colonel," "A Tennessee Judge," "The Colossus," "Emmett Bonlore," "Len Gansett," "The Tear in The Cup, and Other Stories," "The Wives of The Prophet." ILLUSTRATED CHICAGO LAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS Entered according to Act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-six, by WILLIAM H. LEE, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.) [Illustration] THE JUCKLINS CHAPTER I. The neighbors and our family began to laugh at me about as far back as I can remember, and I think that the first serious remark my father ever addressed to me was, "Bill, you are too lazy to amount to anything in this life, so I reckon we'll have to make a school teacher of you." I don't know why he should have called me lazy; I suppose it must have been on account of my awkwardness. Lazy, why, I could sit all day and fish in one place and not get a bite, while my more industrious companions would, out of sheer exhaustion of patience, be compelled to move about; and I hold that patience is the very perfection of industry.