Parties who met us, occasionally,
advised us to put the horses in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through whose
iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not
do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horses
being "bituminous from long deprivation." The reader will excuse me from
translating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a long
word, was a secret between himself and his Maker. He was one of the best
and kindest hearted men that ever graced a humble sphere of life. He was
gentleness and simplicity itself--and unselfishness, too. Although he
was more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself any
airs, privileges, or exemptions on that account. He did a young man's
share of the work; and did his share of conversing and entertaining from
the general stand-point of any age--not from the arrogant, overawing
summit-height of sixty years. His one striking peculiarity was his
Partingtonian fashion of loving and using big words for their own sakes,
and independent of any bearing they might have upon the thought he was
purposing to convey.
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