Part 7 (2/2)

Yet ht--(_Bailey_)

Good actions crown the bays,--(_Heath_)

And God fulfils Himself in many ways--(_Tennyson_)

The world's a wood in which all lose their way--(_Buckingham_)

A fair where thousands meet, but none can stay;--(_Fawkes_)

To sport their season, and be seen no more,--(_Cowper_)

Till tired they sleep, and life's poor play is o'er--(_Pope_)

CHAPTER X

ADVENTURES IN MOSQUITO-LAND

At the close of the school in July, 1870, a friend of mine, Doctor B----, of Boston, and I, attracted by the alluring prospectus of a nen near Plymouth, North Carolina, visited that place via the Merchant's and Miner's steamshi+p line

I wrote an account of this pleasure excursion, which idely copied by northern newspapers in which I figured as the professor and he as the doctor, while both of us combined were called the ”Shoo-Fly Club” I quote some extracts from the description of this re after our arrival in the Southland, doctor and professor, after a brief sojourn in the arh to daunt the stoutest heart

”Mosquitoes to the right of them, mosquitoes to the left of them, black flies above theeance We lay under our netting appalled at the profanity and ferocity of our foes, caught in a trap fro and rang, but we dared not venture out a bayonets was thrust through the bars long enough to hang our clothes on, and fierce enough to suck every drop of blood fro limbs, and our only consolation was that our invariable diet of 'hog and hominy' had so reduced the vital fluid, that our torth a brilliant thought flashed across the mind of the doctor

'The shoo-fly--the shoo-fly,' said he; 'why didn't we think of that?

and out he went for his carpetbag, pulled out so bottles labeled with the mystic words, and made for the bed, entirely covered with a ferocious cloud of the aforesaid 'skeeters' and flies stabbing him for dear life We then proceeded to anoint our bodies with this preparation, which the doctor declared to be a panacea for all human ills; then completely clad in our armor, we sallied forth to the crusade Down came the fiends; they cared not for 'shoo-fly,'

cared not for blows, and our visions of fortunes to be realized from our new discovery vanished away, but not so our torardless of everything save life, the professor fled, down over the stairs he fled, pants and un in the air, to the astonishirls, for the bath-house--here at length plunged beneath the flood he found relief After copious ablutions the professor went back for his friend, but the valiant doctor had retreated behind the bars, resolved there to starve rather than again to face his foes

”Afterand hominy overcame all his fears, and the clubfans, fought a cloud of the famished varmints, while the club sed hoe cake covered with a copious lather of the flies of the season At length our appetites or rather we ourselves, were conquered, and retired in disgust, leaving our foes to bury their dead and divide the spoils of war

”Our host, who is a true gentleman from Pennsylvania, then ordered the darkies to harness the span After the inevitable delays which always attend everything that the fifteenth amendments have undertaken to do, we rode out to view the country; andcongratulated ourselves that our troubles were at an end, but they had but just commenced

Our host had a lame hand, and the professor volunteered to drive; our friends, the varmints, now confined their kind attentions almost exclusively to the horses, which they butchered unh for 'sunny' North Carolina, go; go by all means, and you will return satisfied that old Massachusetts, with all its east winds is a paradise compared e saw in the 'old North State,' or in the 'Old Dominion'

”But to our journey The horses floundered through quags, which toss and tuh strea with scum from the cypress swae, and the professor found hied to avoid the sharp corners of fences, on either side the deep ditches on whose very edge ran the wheels; to urge his horses over stu snouts of prostrate pigs who refused to budge an inch; to ju dark and deep across his path and to spur them down sharp, perpendicular pitches which threatened to break every bone in his body

”Here and therea few logs piled up together, flanked by nified by the name of house; the naked piccaninnies rolled in the dust, and the poor-white scowled as he lifted his hat, while orried our