some little anecdotes concerning what he had
done subsequently in the wooden nutmeg
trade, the clocks-that-wouldn't-figure trade,
the school-teaching trade, the tarred-oakum-
imitation-India-rubber trade, the temperance
lecturing trade, and the whiskey selling trade.
He regretted that his sacerdotal character
precluded him from cowhiding Reverend L.
Sphoon the first time he met him in town;
but offered to match any one of his lay-elders
against his opponent's deacons, and to forfeit
fifty dolls. if the former left a strip of skin
broader than a finger on the body of the
latter after half-an-hour's "licking."

This was the only feud of any consequence
in which the Grace-Walking Brethren were
concerned. They were peaceful, decent,
harmless bodies enough, minding their own
business, not interfering with that of
anybody else, and our citizens took to them
kindly. Their congregations soon began to
multiply in number, and they had chapels at
Marathon, Squashborough, Lower Whittle,
Thermopylæ, Jeffersonville and East
Halleluia. Within a year from their establishment
they had five circuits within a fifty
miles circle of Punkington.

Now a circuit, you must understand, may
comprehend five, ten, fifteen, twenty
congregations; and, the religion not being quite
rich enough to entertain a minister for each
separate congregation, there are so many
circuits—religious "beats," in fact—each of
which is assigned to a different clergyman,
who goes the round thereof in turn.
Punkington circuit, including as it did the
townships of Eggnogville, Bunkum, and Beersheba,
together with Rapparoarer city and the
villages of Snakesby, Fiscopolis, New Marseilles,
Globbs and Ephesus, was a very popular circuit
indeed. There were always dreadful handsome
girls at preachings and camp meetings,
and plenty of comfortable farm-houses where
the ministers were entertained with such
delicacies in the way of pork fixings, mush,
hominy, johnnycakes, canvas-backed ducks,
pumpkin pies, squash, whitepot, curds,
molasses, York hams, turkies, and apple pasties;
with elder wine, and perhaps a sly drop of
peach brandy or Monongahela whiskey, that
would have brought water into the mouth of
a London alderman all cloyed and soggy
from a tortoise dinner at Guildhall, or a
proud British nobleman surfeited with the
luxuries of a regal banquet at the court of
Saint James's. The country around
Punkington was pretty and picturesque; and the
brethren walked in grace with meekness and
devoutness. There was but one thing wanting
to make the whole circuit one real land
of milk and honey; or, rather, there was
one thing that turned it into a land of gall
and wormwood—of soreness of flesh and
bitterness of spirit; and that thing was an
individual; and that individual was Colonel
Quagg.

A dreadful man, a skeery man, a man to
waken snakes and rile monkies was Colonel
Quagg. Goliah Washington Quagg was his
name; and two and a half miles from
Punkington did he locate, on the main road to
Rapparoarer city. He was six foot three
without his stockings, which would have
made him, in jack-boots something terrifically
gigantic to look at. He had a bushy beard
and whiskers, and the integument that
covered his bones was hard and horny as a
crab-shell. The hair of his head was like a
primeval forest, for it looked as though it
had never been cut, combed, weeded, or
trimmed. His eyes were fearful to look
upon when they flashed, and they flashed
almost always. He ate so much that people
said that he was hollow all through—legs,
arms, and all—and packed his food from the
feet upwards. Some people compared him to
a locomotive, for he was always smoking,
drinking, roaring, and coming into collision
with other folks. He compared himself to a
Mississippi steam-boat with the safety-valves
tied down with rope-yarn. "Rosin me up
and stand on my boilers," he used to cry.
"Give me goss and let me rip. Strangers pay
your bills, and liquor once more before you
die, for I must lik every 'coon of you or bust."
He was always licking 'coons. He licked a
backwoodsman; four "Bowery bhoys " from
New York, one after the other; an Irish hod-
carrier (with one hand), and an English prize-
fighter. They set a giant out of a menagerie
at him once, and the giant closed with him,
and was heard, soon afterwards to crack like
a nut. The giant said, (after he cracked),
that it was a darned, tarnation, everlasting
shame it was; for he had gone in to whip
a man, not a grisly bear.

Colonel Quagg was a blacksmith. He was
not by any means the sort of blacksmith that
Professor Longfellow has described. He had
no boys to sit in the church among, no little
daughter to hear singing in the choir. He
was not the sort of blacksmith I saw once,
during my travels in Europe, in a little
village in the south of France, and who, on
a broiling July day, was hammering away at
his anvil with might and main,—in his shirt,
and with his hair in curl papers; for it was
Sunday, and there was a fête in the village
in the evening. No. Colonel Quagg was a
very different kind of Mulciber: not a
harmonious blacksmith or a learned blacksmith;
but a roaring, rampagious, coaly, knotty,
sooty Vulcan of a man. To hear him shout out
hoarsely to 'Zeek, his long, lank bellows-blower;
to see him whirl his tremendous hammer
above his head as though it had been a
feather, and bring it down upon the iron
on his anvil with such a monstrous clang that
the sparks flew about and the flames leaped
up the chimney and tripped up the heels of
the smoke, as if they were frightened out of
their wits. This was a sight—grand if you
like—but fearful.

The colonelcy of Goliah Quagg arose from