30. You must know, then, that the Bouche connection is as numerous as it is respectable. Hardly a county in Virginia where you shall not find a colony of them. And as a rule they are genteel folk, mingling with the best. But (for I shall not conceal it from you) every now and then one stumbles upon a shoot of the original stem that is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. Still, the motto with us is, that a Bouche is a Bouche, even though he be run down at the heel. But our clannishness has its limits. We draw the line at the spelling of the name,—draw it sharply between Bouche and Bush. Still, I happen to have heard my grandfather say that, though old Jim Bush did not spell the name after the aristocratic Huguenot fashion, his father before him did; and that, consequently, he was one of us. After all, he was by no means a bad fellow. It covers his case better to say that he was not profitable unto himself. He was, in fact, a kind of Rip Van Winkle, whose hands, though he was desperately poor and owned a farm of a few acres, were more familiar with the rifle than the handles of a plough. For miles around his tumble-down old house he and his gun were a terror to game of all kinds; and it was believed that, of squirrels especially, he had killed more, in his day, than any man within miles of Alexandria. Nor were there lacking those who maintained that upon a dozen of these edible rodents, as a substratum, he could build up a Brunswick stew such as—but I dined with him once, and feel no need of outside testimony. (I suppose it was the French streak in him. He spelt himself Bush, but blood will tell.) “The main secret, Jack” (everybody calls me Jack, no matter how poor and humble they may be; besides, he _was_ a cousin),—“the main secret is that I put in the brains. When I was a green hand with the rifle I used to knock their heads off; and monstrous proud I was, I remember, of never touching their bodies. Now I save their brains by just wiping off their smellers.” Yes, my son, he was an out-at-the-elbows Bouche, and his language was low. But let us not sneer at him. He could do two things well. And how many of us can do one! For my own part, when I look at myself and then at my brother-men, I cannot find it in my heart to despise the lowliest of them all. The scornful alone do I scorn. And when I see a little two-legged puff-ball strutting along, with its nose in the air, I long for old Jim Bush and his rifle, that he might serve it as he did the squirrels. 31.