VI.

HOW SIMON SUGGS

"RAISED JACK."

he

UNTIL Simon entered his seventeenth year, lived with his father, an old "hard-shell" Baptist preacher; who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boys-or endeavoured to do so-according to the strictest requisition of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in Middle Georgia, which was then newly settled; and Simon, whose wits from the time he was a "shirt-tail boy," were always too sharp for his father's, contrived to contract all the coarse vices incident to such a region.

He stole his mother's roosters to fight them at Bob Smith's grocery, and his father's ploughhorses to enter them in "quarter" matches at the same place. He pitched dollars with Bob Smith himself, and could "beat him into doll-rags" whenever it came to a measurement. To crown his accomplishments, Simon was tip-top at the game of "old sledge," which was the fashionable game of that era, and was early initiated in the mystery of "stocking the papers."

The vicious habits of Simon were, of course, a sore trouble to his father, Elder Jedediah. He reasoned, he counselled, he remonstrated, he lashed, but Simon was an incorrigible, irreclaimable devil.

One day the simple-minded old man came rather unexpectedly to the field where he had left Simon and Ben, and a negro boy named Bill, at work. Ben was still following his plough, but Simon and Bill were in a fence-corner very earnestly engaged at seven up." Of course the game was instantly suspended, as soon as they spied the old man sixty or seventy yards off, striding towards them.

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It was evidently a "gone case" with Simon and

Bill; but our hero determined to make the best of it. Putting the cards into one pocket, he coolly picked up the small coins which constituted the stake, and fobbed them in the other, remarking:

"Well, Bill, this game's blocked; we'd as well quit."

"But, Massa Simon," remarked the boy, "half dat money's mine. An't you gwine to lemme hab

'em ?"

"Oh, never mind the money, Bill; the old man's going to take the bark off of both of us-and besides, with the hand I helt when we quit, I should 'a beat you and won it all any way."

"Well, but, Massa Simon, we nebber finish de game, and de rule-"

I

"Go to Old Scratch with your rule!" said the impatient Simon; "don't you see daddy's right down upon us, with an armful of hickories? tell you I hilt nothin' but trumps, and could 'a beat the horns off of a billy-goat. Don't that satisfy you? Somehow or nother your d-d hard to please!" About this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone-for by this time the

Reverend Jedediah was close at hand-he continued : "but maybe daddy don't know, right down sure,

what we've been doin'. twon't hurt no way; playin' mumble-peg."

Let's try him with a lie— let's tell him we've been

Bill was perforce compelled to submit to this inequitable adjustment of his claim of a share of the stakes; and of course agreed to the game of mumble-peg. All this was settled and a peg driven in the ground, slyly and hurriedly between Simon's legs as he sat on the ground, just as the old man reached the spot. He carried under his left arm several neatly-trimmed sprouts of formidable length, while in his left hand he held one which he was intently engaged in divesting of its superfluous twigs.

"Soho! youngsters!-you in the fence-corner, and the crop in the grass? what saith the Scriptur’ Simon? 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard,' and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you and that nigger been a-doin' ?"

Bill shook with fear, but Simon was cool as a cucumber, and answered his father to the effect that they had been wasting a little time in a game of mumble-peg.

"Mumble-peg! mumble-peg!" repeated old Mr. Suggs, "what's that?"

Simon explained the process of rooting for the peg; how the operator got upon his knees, keeping his arms stiff by his side, leaned forward and extracted the peg with his teeth.

"So you git upon your knees, do you, to pull up that nasty little stick! you'd better git upon 'em to ask mercy for your sinful. souls, and for a dyin' world. But let's see one o' you git the peg up

now."

The first impulse of our hero was to volunteer to gratify the curiosity of his worthy sire, but a glance at the old man's countenance changed his "notion," and he remarked that "Bill was a long ways the best hand."

Bill, who did not deem Simon's modesty an omen favourable to himself, was inclined to reciprocate compliments with his young master; but a gesture of impatience from the old man set him instantly upon his knees; and, bending forward, he essayed to lay hold with his teeth, of the peg, which Simon, just at that moment, very wickedly pushed half an inch further down.

Just as the breeches and hide of the boy were