trary, having always fed heartily on pumpkin pies, doughnuts, Indian puddings, and other Puritan dainties, she was as round and plump as a pudding herself.

With this round, rosy Miss Betsey Samuel Sewell fell in love. As he was a young man of good character, industrious in his business, and a member of the church, the mint-master very readily gave his consent. "Yes, you may take her," said he, in his rough way; "and you'll find her a heavy burden enough."

On the wedding-day we may suppose that honest John Hull dressed himself in a plum-colored coat, all the buttons of which were made of pine-tree shillings. The buttons of his waistcoat were sixpences. Thus attired, he sat with great dignity in his armchair; and, being a portly old gentleman, he completely filled it from elbow to elbow. On the opposite side of the room, between her bridemaids, sat Miss Betsey. She was blushing with all her might, and looked like a fullblown peony or a great red apple.

There, too, was the bridegroom, dressed in a fine purple coat and gold-lace waistcoat, with as much other finery as the Puritan laws and customs would allow him to put on. His hair was cropped close to his head, because Governor Endicott had forbidden any man to wear it below the ears. But he was a very personable young man; and so thought the bridemaids and Miss Betsey herself.

The mint-master also was pleased with his new son-in-law, especially as he had courted Miss Betsey out of pure love. and had said nothing at all about her portion, or dowry. So, when the marriage ceremony was over, Captain Hull whispered a word to two of his menservants, who immediately went out, and soon returned, lugging in a large pair of scales. They were such a pair as wholesale merchants use for weighing bulky commodities; and quite a bulky commodity was now to be weighed in them.

"Daughter Betsey," said the mint-master, "get into one side of these scales."

Miss Betsey or Mrs. Sewell, as we must now call her did as she was bid, like a dutiful child, without any question of the why and wherefore. But what her father could mean, unless to make her husband pay for her by the pound (in which case she would have been a dear bargain), she had not "the least idea.

"And now," said honest John Hull to the servants, "bring that box hither."

The box to which the mint-master pointed was a huge, square, iron-bound, oaken chest; it was big enough for four or five children to play hide and seek in. The servants tugged with might and main, but could not lift this enormous receptacle, and were finally obliged to drag it across the floor.

Captain Hull then took a key from his girdle, unlocked the chest, and lifted its ponderous lid. Behold, it was full to the brim of bright pine-tree shillings, fresh from the mint; and Samuel Sewell began to think that his father-in-law had got possession of all the money in the Massachusetts treasury. But it was only the mint-master's honest share of the coinage.

Then the servants, at Captain Hull's command, heaped double handfuls of shillings into one side of the scales, while Betsey remained in the other. Jingle, jingle, went the shillings, as handful after handful was thrown in, till, plump and ponderous as she was, they fairly weighed the young lady from the floor.

"There, son Sewell!" cried the honest mint-master; "take these shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly and thank Heaven for her. It is not every wife that's worth her weight in silver!"

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Enterprise for a volunteer committee: Dramatize in pantomime (without words) the courting and the wedding of Miss Betsey. 2. Did Captain Hull get his money honestly? Give reasons for your

answer.

3. If money did not exist, mention articles or goods which you could give in exchange for groceries, for a pair of shoes, and for ad

mission to a motion-picture theatre; be sure to name articles which the proprietor would probably accept.

4. Explain the disadvantages of barter. Has it any advantages? Tell about something you once bartered.

5. What is money? Name three commodities other than gold, silver, nickel, copper, and paper, which have been used as money (Look up "money" in the encyclopedia or in one of the refer ences on p. 207.)

6. Volunteer research problem: How money is made. Tell whether governments are paid for making money in some such way as Captain Hull was paid.

7. Special report for a volunteer: Explain the services of money. (H. C. Hill, Community Life and Civic Problems, 366–367.)

8. Problem: How much would you be worth at your weight in silver? at your weight in gold? How can you find out?

9.

What do you like best about this selection - the narrative, the humor, or the style?

2. THE GENUINE MEXICAN PLUG

MARK TWAIN

I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free, magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad Mexicans and Americans displayed every day. How they rode! Leaning just gently forward out of the perpendicular, easy and graceful, with broad slouchhat brim blown square up in front, they swept through the town like the wind! The next minute they were only a sailing puff of dust on the far desert. I had quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full of anxiety to learn more. I resolved to buy a horse.

While the thought was rankling in my mind the auctioneer came scurrying through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on him as a dromedary; but he was "going, going, at twenty-two! - horse, saddle, and bridle at twenty-two dollars, gentlemen!" and I could hardly resist.

A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auc

4

tioneer's brother) noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddle alone was worth the money. I said I had half a notion to bid. Said he: "I know that horse know him well. You are a stranger, I take it, and so you might think he was an American horse, but I assure you he is not. He is nothing of the kind; but excuse my speaking in a low voice, other people being near he is, without the shadow of a doubt, a Genuine Mexican Plug!"

I did not know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was something about this man's way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that I would own a Genuine Mexican Plug, or die.

"Has he any other er- advantages?" I inquired, suppressing what eagerness I could.

He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one side, and breathed in my ear these words: "He can outbuck anything in America!"

"Going, going, going at twent-ty-four dollars and a half, gen "Twenty-seven!" I shouted, in a frenzy.

"And sold!" said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine Mexican Plug to me.

I could scarcely contain my exultation. I paid the money, and put the animal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself.

In the afternoon I brought the creature into the plaza, and certain citizens held him by the head, and others by the tail, while I mounted him. As soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch together, lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me straight into the air a matter of three or four feet! I came as straight down again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost on the high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse's neck all in the space of three or four seconds.

Then he rose and stood almost straight up on his hind

feet, and I, clasping his lean neck desperately, slid back into the saddle, and held on. He came down, and immediately hoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky, and stood on his forefeet. And then down he came once more, and began the original exercise of shooting me straight up again.

The third time I went up I heard a stranger say:

"Oh, don't he buck, though!"

While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a leathern strap, and when I arrived again the Genuine Mexican Plug was not there. A Californian youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if he might have a ride. I granted him that luxury. He mounted the Genuine, got lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended, and the horse darted away like a telegram. He soared over three fences like a bird, and disappeared down the road toward the Washoe Valley.

I sat down on a stone with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of my hands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. I still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. Pen cannot describe how I was jolted up. Imagination cannot conceive how disjointed I was how internally, externally, and universally I was unsettled, mixed up, and ruptured. There was a sympathetic crowd around me, though.

One elderly-looking comforter said:

"Stranger, you've been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows that horse. Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he'd buck; he is the very worst devil to buck on the continent of America. You hear me. I'm Curry. Old Curry. Old Abe Curry. And moreover, he is a simon-pure, out-and-out, genuine old Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that, too. Why, you turnip, if you had laid

low and kept dark, there's chances to buy an American horse for mighty little more than you paid for that bloody old foreign relic."