The Reverend Mr. Suggs had, once in his life, gone to Augusta; an extent of travel which in those days was a little unusual. His consideration among his neighbours was considerably increased by the circumstance, as he had all the benefit of the popular inference that no man could visit the city of Augusta without acquiring a vast superiority over all his untravelled neighbours, in every department of human knowledge. Mr. Suggs, then, very naturally felt ineffably indignant that an individual who had never seen a collection of human habitations larger than a log-house village—an individual, in short, no other or better than Bob Smith—should venture to express an opinion concerning the manners, customs, or anything else appertaining to, or in any wise connected with, the _ultima thule_ of backwoods Georgians. There were two propositions which witnessed their own truth to the mind of Mr. Suggs—the one was, that a man who had never been at Augusta, could not know anything about that city, or any place or thing else; the other that one who _had_ been there must, of necessity, be not only well informed as to all things connected with the city itself, but perfectly _au fait_ upon all subjects whatsoever. It was therefore in a tone of mingled indignation and contempt that he replied to the last remark of Simon. “_Bob Smith_ says—does he? And who’s _Bob Smith_? Much does _Bob Smith_ know about Augusty! He’s been thar, I reckon! Slipped off yarly some mornin’ when nobody warn’t noticin’, and got back afore night! It’s _only_ a hundred and fifty mile. Oh yes, _Bob Smith_ knows all about it! _I_ don’t know nothin’ about it! _I_ a’n’t never been to Augusty—I couldn’t find the road thar I reckon, ha! ha! _Bob—Smi—th!_ The eternal stink! if he was only to see one o’ them fine gentlemen in Augusty, with his fine broad-cloath and bell-crown hat, and shoe-boots a-shinin’ like silver, he’d take to the woods and kill himself a-runnin’. Bob Smith! that’s whar all your devilment comes from, Simon.” “Bob Smith’s as good as anybody else, I judge; and a heap smarter than some. He showed me how to cut Jack,” continued Simon, “and that’s more than some people can do if they _have_ been to Augusty.” “If Bob Smith kin do it,” said the old man, “I kin too. I don’t know it by that name; but if it’s book knowledge or plain sense, and Bob kin do it, it’s reasonable to s’pose that old Jed’diah Suggs won’t be bothered bad. Is it any ways similyar to the rule of three, Simon?” “Pretty much, daddy, but not adzactly,” said Simon, drawing a pack from his pocket to explain. “Now daddy,” he proceeded, “you see these here four cards is what we call Jacks. Well, now, the idee is, if you’ll take the pack and mix ’em all up together, I’ll take off a passel from top, and the bottom one of them I take off will be one of the Jacks.” “Me to mix em fust?” said Jedediah. “Yes.” “And you not to see but the back of the top one, when you go to ‘cut,’ as you call it?” “Jist so, daddy.”