“The goodness, Lord ha’ mercy, no, Bill! But whar’s Joe?” Up to this time Mr. Meriweather had been as pleasant and jovial a looking Green River man, as you might find in a week’s ride along the southern border of Kentucky, and had finished his lecture on the natural history of the chawtoback, and the unsaddling his horse at the same time; but no sooner had the old lady asked the question, “Whar’s Joe?” than he instantaneously dropped on the bench alongside the questioner, gave her an imploring look of pity and despair, let his head fail into his open palms, and bending down both until they nearly touched his knees, he uttered such a sigh as might a Louisville and New Orleans eight boiler steam-packet in the last stage of collapsed flues. “Goodness, gracious, Bill! what’s the matter?” cried the old lady, letting her stringing apparatus fall. “Hev you got the cramps? Phillisy Ann, bring that bottle here outen the cupboard, quick, and some pepper pods!” “Ah—h! no!” sighed the sufferer, not changing his position, but mournfully shaking his head, “I ain’t got no cramps.” However, Phillisy Ann arriving in “no time” with the article of household furniture called for, that gentleman, utterly disregarding the pepper pods, proceeded to pour out into a tumbler, preparatory to drinking, a sufficient quantity of amber coloured fluid to utterly exterminate any cramps that might, by any possibility, be secretly lingering in his system, or fortify himself against any known number that might attack him in the distant future; and having finished, immediately assumed his former position, and went into most surprisingly exact imitations of a wheezy locomotive on a foggy morning. “Merciful powers! what can the matter be?” exclaimed the widow, now thoroughly excited, as Mr. Meriweather appeared to be getting no better, but was rocking himself up and down, “like a man who is sawing marble,” groaning and muttering inarticulate sounds, as if in the last extremity of bodily anguish. But Mr. Meriweather was for some time unable to make any reply that could be understood, until at length, at the conclusion of a very fierce paroxysm, the widow thought she could catch the two words, “Poor Joe!” “Is there anything the matter with Joe?” asked the old lady. If it were possible for any _one_ man to feel and suffer, as far as appearances went, all the agony and misery that a half dozen of the most miserable and unfortunate of the human family ever have felt and suffered, and yet live, Mr. Meriweather certainly was that individual, for he immediately went off into such a state of sighs, groans, and lamentations, mingled with exclamations of “Poor Joe!” “Poor Brother Joe!” that the widow, aroused to the highest state of sympathy and pity, could do nothing but wipe her eyes with her apron, and repeat the question. “Whar is Joe, Mr. Meriweather, is he sick?” “Oh—h—no!” groaned his mourning brother. “Is he dead then? poor Joe!” faintly inquired the old lady.