perfectly clear in his own mind, and denying many suppositions of knowledge which were made for him and which it would have added to his consequence to be possessed of. He was honest and direct as if he had never thought of being anything else—a saving of trouble which was perhaps among the reasons for his lasting so long.
Mr. Ruggles proposed, after a while, that we should ask the Sun, that had shone so long upon Billy, to oblige us with his likeness; and, on explaining to the veteran what his old friend Daylight had learned to do, of late years, he consented at once, though with an amusing expression of reserved faith in the matter. Up in the mountains, where Billy is a vagrant, daguerreotypes were probably never heard of; and he evidently thought that he had seen his own shadow long enough to know all the sun could do in that line!
We soon had the ponies at the door, and hoisted in the old man—his peeled stick and tattered shirt in alto relievo on the back seat, and about a century's difference between his age and that of my boy, who sat beside him. The day was not too warm, and the drive along the river to New-burgh was very delightful. Billy, probably (riding along so respectably now), was not even remembering my agonizing encounter with him, a year ago, on the same road—the old sinner staggering home drunk, in my virtuous trowsers, given him the day before! I should mention, by
