“How far does your old uncle reside from here?” I asked anxiously of my friend Ned.
“Be patient, my good fellow, and we will soon get there.”
“I wish we were there now, I am so anxious to see the old hero. You say he was an active participator in some of the principal incidents of our revolution?”
“He was, and that old musket which I showed you yesterday, accompanied him in many of his adventures. From the first bloodshed at Lexington till the final capture at Yorktown, did that hero bare his breast to the storm of the revolution. His blood has bathed the soil of many a battle-field, and innumerable are the hair-breadth perils which he has passed through. You are partial to these tales of perils, L——, and you shall now be gratified to your heart’s content.”
My heart leaped with joy, and I began already to calculate the time and expense which it would require to write a volume of his adventures; and what edification it would be to the devourers of omnivorous literature.
“Is he a great talker?” I immediately asked, for, but a short time previous I had made several trips to see pioneers solely for the purpose of committing to paper their adventures; and others, after much trouble I had reached their domicils, I found as uncommunicative as a Saracenic mute.
“He loves to talk, and nothing pleases him more than to have such patient and willing listeners as you are; with you he will talk from morning till night.”
I rubbed my hands with delight; the volume which had danced before my imagination for a few minutes past, now swelled in size from an octavo to a folio; and my impatience to see the hero, almost became insupportable.
“There is one failing which my old uncle has,” continued my friend, “and that is, he possesses a very exuberant imagination.”
“So much the better,” I exclaimed, “then his recitation will not continue on that dead level, which gives such prolixity to a narrative; now and then a flight of the imagination adds a marvellous spice to such things; a single narration, you know, only draws the picture and shades it—it is left for imagination to paint it.”
“But you do not precisely understand me; I mean that my uncle—who is getting old now, you know—is in the habit, if allowed to commence in that way, to dwell for hours together upon the most marvellous adventures, which he draws solely from imagination, and confounds with his real ones; but leave this to me, and I will set him on the right track; by the way, there is one incident connected with his very mutable life which I must prevail upon him to relate; I call his imagined adventures yarns—so let us ride forward, for yonder is the house.”