with pain in every joint, I consented to take my _chances_; and after preparing for the occasion like any person would in such circumstances, where clothes were scarce and no one near, I waded into the doughy sea. I held the wheel from going _back_, while Johnny pulled the wagon on a lock on my side. I would then draw myself up out of the mud, take a few long breaths, and after touching up my will-power with a little Iowa bog-sirup that we had along, go to the other side. We worked thus from left to right, moving a foot at a time; and at length, when the bottle could have been broken without wasting much sirup, we once more stood upon _terra firma_. We had often heard of _the valley of the shadow of death_, and right then and there concluded that if that was not it, it must be a fork of it, and if we found that it reached from the north to the south, we would go by the way of the _gulf_ on our return. However, after washing our horses all over, and trimming ourselves up to once more look like white men, we felt a little more experienced and none the worse. We were about ready to start again when we caught sight of a middle-aged Dutch-woman, with two little mules to a spring-wagon, and a great coop of chickens, bearing down the hill-side to the same mud-hole. Willing to lend our experience, especially to a _lady_, we most politely spoke to her; but she paid no more attention than if a _prairie-dog_ had barked at the road-side. Well, thought we, it is a nice thing to be _independent_; but that mud-hole may bother you some, and may be the means of our becoming intimately acquainted. Sure enough, when she got to about where _we_ stuck, the little mules gave out and one of them lay down. You may all talk of whoops and halloos, but the yell of the rebels, the groans of the dying, and the thundering of the cannon at the battle of _Stone River_, were not to be compared to the shouts of that _Dutch-woman_ in the midst of the Iowa bog. Nevertheless, neither the angry countenance nor the force of the brawny arm had any effect upon the little mule, which, like Job, had determined to take it patiently. If you could have seen the unearthly smile upon her face as she looked back to us and yelled, “_Coom_,” you would have been _surprised_ at the great change one mud-hole and one Dutch-woman can bring about. Wading in to where the little Job lay prostrate, I took hold of his bridle and gave him a kick in the ribs and an English yell; and doubtless never having heard an _English word_ in his _life_, it apparently frightened him so that he forgot all about the _mud-hole_. The last we saw of the _Dutch-woman_ she was going over the brow of a hill, sitting upon the back of her neck, screaming in the key of E, the old chicken-coop tossing, the chickens squalling, and the little mules down to a mile a minute. If it had not been for that ugly _bog_ to cross we would have _looked after_ that outfit; for the way that _coop_ was bobbing it might