16 



Poll ? Bid her come up to Draw's to-morrow night I've got 

 a red and yellow frock for her a deuce of a concern !" 



" Yah ha ! yah ha ha yaah I" and amid a most discordant 

 chorus of African merriment, we passed by a neat farm-house 

 shaded by two glorious locusts on the right, and a new red 

 brick mansion, the pride of the village, with a flourishing store 

 on the left and wheeled up to the famous Tom Draw's tavern 

 - a long white house with a piazza six feet wide, at the top of 

 eight steep steps, and a one-story kitchen at the end of it ; a 

 pump with a gilt pine-apple at the top of it, and horse-trough ; 

 a wagon shed and stable sixty feet long ; a sign-post with an 

 indescribable female figure swinging upon it, and an ice house 

 over the way ! 



Such was the house, before which we pulled up just as the 

 sun was setting, amid a gabbling of ducks, a barking of terri- 

 ers, mixed with the deep bay of two or three large heavy fox- 

 hounds which had been lounging about in the shade, and a 

 peal of joyous welcome from all beings, quadruped or biped, 

 within hearing. 



" Hulloa ! boys !'' cried a deep hearty voice from within the 

 bar-room. " Hulloa ! boys ! Walk in ! walk in ! What the 

 eternal h 11 are you about there ?" 



W r ell, we did walk into a large neat bar-room, with a bright 

 hickory log crackling upon the hearth-stone, a large round table 

 in one corner, covered with draught-boards, and old newspapers, 

 among which showed pre-eminent the " Spirit of the Times ;" 

 a range of pegs well stored with great-coats, fishing-rods, whips, 

 game-bags, spurs, and every other stray appurtenance of sport- 

 ing, gracing one end ; while the other was more gaily decorated 

 by the well furnished bar, in the right-hand angle of which my 

 eye detected in an instant a handsome nine pound double barrel, 

 an old six foot Queen Ann's tower-musket, and a long smooth- 

 bored rifle ; and last, not least, outstretched at easy length upon 

 the counter of his bar, to the left-hand of the gang-way the 

 right side being more suitably decorated with tumblers, and de- 

 canters of strange compounds supine, with fair round belly 

 towering upward, and head voluptuously pillowed on a heap of 

 wagon cushions lay in his glory but no ! hold ! the end of 

 a chapter is no place to introduce Tom Draw !* 



* It ia almost a painful task to read over and revise this chapter. The 

 " twenty years ago" is too keenly visible to the mind's eye in every line. Of 



