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178
hereafter. You see two men standing
in the foreground. One of these —the
man with his coat off and an apron on
—is evidently the foreman of the com
posing room; and the other man is
probably one of the editors or owners
of the paper, telling him of something
that he wants to have done. The fore
man has control of the composing room,
and directs in everything that is done.
He gives the compositors their copy,
reads the proofs to see if there are any
errors in what has been set, superin
tends the making-up of the paper (of
which more further on), and does many
other things, as you will discover before
we are done.
Next week, we will tell you more
about type-setting, and some of the
other things necessary to be done, be
fore they are ready for the press. But
we have said enough for the present.
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HORN BOOK.
A Little One’s Talk with the Stars.
O U little twinkling stars, that
(gmO shine
Above my head so high,
m k«t a paar w^ng3,
fYfP I’d join you in the sky.
fey “I do not know how old you are,
Or whether you can speak;
But you may twinkle all night long,
And play at hide and seek.
“Oh, tell me, little stars, for much
I wonder, why you go
The whole night long from east to west,
So patiently and slow.”
“We have a Father, little child,
Who guides us on our way;
We never question when He speaks—
We listen and obey.”
Inscribe injuries on sand, and bene
fits on marble.
BURKE’S WEEKLY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.
Written for Burke’s Weekly.
THE YOUNG EXPLORERS;
OR, 80Y-MFE IS TEXAB.
BY JOHN C. DUVAL,
Author of “ Jack Dobell; or, A Boy's Ad
ventures in Texas," “ The Adventures
of Big-Foot Wallace," etc
CHAPTER XXI.
Whiling Away the Time — Cudjo's Opinion of
Indiana —Bears versus Mexican Hogs — Un
cle Seth Looks A head Fifty Years His
Prison Experiences He Makes Friends
vsith a Mouse —Nothing to do, the Hardest
Kind of Work —Abundance of Wild Turkeys
Turkey Shooting in Bed —Exploring the
Canon —A Race after Buffaloes,
the job of furbishing up
our arms had been completed
Uncle Seth’s satisfaction,
each one amused himself for the
rest of the evening as he thought
best, Henry was on guard ; Mr.
Pitt and Lawrence went out ‘‘pro
specting” among the gulches for
gold and silver; Uncle Seth stepped
out, as he said, “to git a little/resA
for supper;” Cudjo set to work,
with needle and thread, to sew up
some terrible rents iu his pants —
made by the sharp thorns of the
chaparral bushes ; and Willie and
myself went out fishing in a deep,
clear pool of water about a hun
dred yards below the camp. It
was literally swarming with fish of
several varieties, and they were so
totally unsuspicious of a hook that
it really seemed cruel to take ad
vantage of their ignorance. In
half an hour we caught as many as
we all could possibly eat for sup
per, and returned to camp. Mr.
Pitt and Lawrence came back soon
afterwards, each with a pocket full
of rocks, but there were no nug
gets among them —nothing, in fact,
more valuable than some beautiful
crystals of quartz.
In a little while Uncle Seth re-
turned also, bringing with him the
tender loin and hams of a yearling doe
he had killed.
By this time Cudjo had got through
with his tailoring, and set to work to
cook supper out of the abundant ma
terials we had furnished him. Several
of us occasionally lent him a hand, and
in spite of the old saying, that “too
many cooks spoil the broth,” in a few
moments we sat down to a supper that
would have tempted Diogenes out of
his tub —hot coffee, roast bear meat,
venison steaks, fried trout and perch,
flanked by platters of smoking “dunde
funk,” highly seasoned with red pepper.
Each of the party wielded a trenchant
knife and fork, especially Cudjo, who,
when he had finished his protracted re
past, gave it as his deliberate opinion,
“ dat dis ‘ Übalde Canon ’ would be a
fust-rate place to live in, ef’twan’t fur
dem dratted Ingens dats always layin
round here, wid dare bow and arrow,
jess to git a chance to sculp people dats
gwying about tending to dare own biz
ness. What you reckon sich folks made
for, anyhow, Mass Lawrence? ”
“ I’ll answer your qurstion,” replied
Lawrence, “ifyou’ll tell me what havi
linas were made for.”
“ Oh, shucks! Mass Lawrence,” said
Cudjo, “aint you nebber gwying to quit
talking ’bout dem Maxican hog? I
’spose deys made to run arter nigger ;
but de} r don’t cotch ’em ebbery time,
do, I kin tell you.”
“No,” replied Lawrence, “norbears
neither.”
“Well, I’d ruther have the bars arter
me,” said Cudjo, “fur es dey do scare
a body sometimes, deys mitygood meat
when you kill ’em ; but dem dratted
long-legged Maxican hog will run a nig
ger tell his tongue 101 l out, and den
when he shoots ’em, dey so strong dat
a turkey-buzzard heself would turn up
he nose at ’em.”
“ How many did you shoot the other
day, when they run you into camp?”
asked Henry.
But Cudjo, like some other people I
have known, had a very handy way of
not hearing questions that were hard to
answer, and just then his attention was
engrossed by a batch of fish that needed
turning.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said
Willie to Uncle Seth, who was sitting,
silently puffing his pipe, and diligently
whittling a splinter of cedar wood with
his butcher knife.
“Well,” said Uncle Seth, “I was
jest then thinking, if a feller could only
come back to this country fifty or sixty
years from now, what a great change
he would find in every thing. The In
gens, the bufferlos, and the bars would
then be gone ; houses, fields and gar
dens would everywhere meet his sight;
and instead of the howling of cayotes,
and the screams of ‘ painters,’ he’d hear
the church bells ringing, the chicken
cocks crowing, or the children laughing
—as they went to school or hunted haws
and persimmons in the woods—and may
be so the puffing of a steam ingine,
with a long train of cars rattling on the
iron rails behind it.
“It does beat all natur,” he con
tinued, “the way things changes in
these new countries. I aint a very old
man yit, and still I’ve seed three States
grow up already out of the wilderness,
and all of em are now filled with white
folks, and their houses and farms, and
their big cities. I reckon its all for the
best; but yit I can’t help feeling a
leetle sorry when I see the bufferlo driv
back further and further ev’ry day, and
big cotton plantations whar my choicest
huntin’ grounds used to be. Howsom
dever, I reckon there’ll be game enough
to last my time out, and that’s all I
s’pose I need care about. I aint got
no family to look arter, and I kin foller
it up as I’ve been doin’ for the last
thirty odd years.”
“ You’ll not have to say then,” said
Mr. Pitt, “as the §Moor did, that
‘ Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ ”
“ I don’t know Mr. Othello,” said
Uncle Seth, “ nor what “sort of bizness
he follers ; but es lie’s got nothing to
do I pities him. F'neveUwas in that
fix but once, and that was when the
Mexicans had me ‘jugged’ at Matamo
ras. They kep me nigh on two months
in a little room about ten feet squar,
with only one winder to it, which wa’nt
bigger than my two hands, and not a
thing inside ’except your Uncle Seth,
and the bufferlo robe I had to sleep on.
I tell you, boys, I never was so hard
put to it to pass off the time in all my
born days. Es Uhad had a leetle soft
pine for whittling, it wouldn’t have been
so bad, but they wouldn’t let me have
that even, though I offered the chap that
brung me my bread and water fifty
cents for a small chunk of it. I believe
in my soul es they had kep me tliar two
weeks longer, I would have gone plum
crazy. I counted every crack in the
walls, and made a kalkerlation of how
many squar inches thar 'was in ’em,
which occupied me a considerable spell
—for you see I never was very quick at
cyphering; but at last I got through
with that, and then I said over and
over to myself everything I had ever
larnt by heart the multerplication
table, and every scrap of a song ballad
I could think of, and two or three
prayers besides, my mammy had larnt
me when -I was a little shaver, and
which I hadn’t repeated for many a
long year before —the more’s the shame
for me. At last, when I would git
through with everything I could think
of, I would lay me down on my bufferlo
robe and stare at the naked walls of the
room that shut out the blue sky, and
the sunshine, and the green grass.
“One day, when I was layin’ in this
way, looking at the white walls, and
just ready to give in for good, I seed a
little mouse poke his head out’ll a crack
in one corner, and peep around in an
enquirin’ sort of way. ‘ Come in, my
little feller,’ says I, before I thought;
‘come in, and you shall be welcome to
the best I’ve got,’ which was a crust of
bread. But in place of cornin’ in, as
soon as he heard me, he dodged back
in his hole, and I didn’t see nothing
more of him for an hour. All this time,
though, I watched the hole like a hawk,
and then I seed him peep out agin, and
take another look around. This time I
didn’t holler at him, but lay perfectly
still, and arter a while he crep out easy,
and little by little he sidled up to a
crust of bread that was laying close to
my face. I didn’t wink my eyes for
fear of scaring him, and when he had
eat as much as he wanted, he slipped
back agin into his hiding place.
“ Well, from that time on, every day
he’d come out for his breakfast, dinner
and supper (and I always kep a crust
of bread for him near my bed), until at
last, when he found I wa’nt so danger-