I
saw another wood-chopper sitting down on the ascent of Bald Mountain,
with his axe on one side and a jug and provisions on the other, on the
way to his day's toil.
The Revolutionary pensioners come out into the sunshine to make oath that
they are still above ground. One, whom Mr. S------ saluted as "Uncle
John," went into the bar-room, walking pretty stoutly by the aid of a
long, oaken staff,--with an old, creased, broken and ashen bell-crowned
hat on his head, and wearing a brown old-fashioned suit of clothes.
Pretty portly, fleshy in the face, and with somewhat of a paunch,
cheerful, and his senses, bodily and mental, in no very bad order, though
he is now in his ninetieth year. "An old man's withered and wilted
apple," quoth Uncle John, "keeps a good while." Mr. S------ says his
grandfather lived to be a hundred, and that his legs became covered with
moss, like the trunk of an old tree. Uncle John would smile and cackle
at a little jest, and what life there was in him seemed a good-natured
and comfortable one enough. He can walk two or three miles, he says,
"taking it moderate.
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