Needless to say, therefore, that this book was to instruct and edify you. You may see that from the very first sentence of it all that I wrote: “And, now in conclusion, my dear boy, if you rise from the perusal of this work a wiser and better man, the direct author of the book and the indirect author of your being will feel amply repaid for all his toil.” Such were my intentions. And now read the book, as it stands. Heavens and earth, was there ever such another! Alas, those Danichester molecules, what have they not made me say! Page after page, and chapter after chapter, in which I defy even a mouse to pick up a crumb of edification. Chapter after chapter of feasting, fiddling, dancing, courting,—roast turkeys, broiled oysters, hams seven years old. Bowls full of egg-nogg, pipes full of tobacco, students full of apple-toddy,—everything to make a man feel good, nothing to make him be good. For the heathen Viking in me speaks! Yet he does not hold entire sway. But as we sit—you and I and the friends you shall presently make—sit joyously picnicking in a fair wood—more than once the trees above us, as you shall find, will seem to moan, as they bend before the gentle breeze. ’Tis the spirit of the melancholy Jaques, perched like a raven, there. To him a sob lies lurking in every laugh; and his weary eyes can never look upon a dimple—a dimple, smile-wrought in damask cheek—but they see therein the sheen of coming tears. 28. Here I am, then, Whacker-Danichester-Bouche. [Anglicé, Bush.] And, since man is but the epitome of his ancestry, what kind of an author should result? Chemists tells us that it is not so much the molecules as their arrangement. Let us try this: Danichester-Bush-Whacker,—so what else could I be but a Humoristico-sentimental Bushwhacker? And such I am, ladies and gentlemen, at your service! 29. And a Bushwhacker, beloved scion, you will rightly divine to be one who whacks from behind a bush. But that this is so is (and _that_ you would never guess) one of those whimsical accidents of which philology points out so many examples. Bushwhackers no more got their name in the way the name suggests than your Shank-high fowls got theirs from length of limb. How they did get it I must now explain. Not that I may vaingloriously show off my rather quaint and curious philologic lore. I have a better motive. The word has its origin in an incident in our family history; an incident, too, of such interest that it gave rise to a poem, famous in its day, beginning, “All quiet along the Potomac to-night,”—the author of which will never be known. For three hundred and eleven people (two hundred and ninety-nine women and twelve men) went before justices of the peace, when it began to make a noise in the world, and made oath that they wrote it. Which shows, among other things, that there is no lack of justices of the peace in this country. But let’s to the incident.