156 TROTTYS WEDDING TOUR.

ple begin to compose as soon as they began to think; third,
because it would save me the trouble of telling you a story
myself !

No. 1.— SLAVERY IS THE GREATEST CuRSE of Human Nature.

(J feel compelled to insert a parenthesis for the purpose of
admitting that No. 1 was not, even at the cost of “ fretting a
week and crying an hour,” an original production on the part
of Trotty. It is a fac-simile of the first composition written
by the daughter of a famous antislavery author, — with whom

‘I used to go to school when I was the size of Trotty, — and

Trotty had heard me tell about the school, and the author,
and the daughter, and the author’s daughter’s composition,
till he knew it by heart; and I have no doubt that he thought
he was doing just as smart a thing as the little heiress of
fame had done, when he gravely got it off; and that Nita or
Nate would some time or other be telling of it and him to
some other Trotty yet unborn and unbothered with the duties
of authorship.)

But if I stop to talk, I shall never finish copying; so here,
word for word, as Miss Pumpkin wrote it down for Trotty, is

No. 2.— PEaNnouts.

I like peanuts. Grandma don’t. So does Lill and Biddy.
First you crack e shell. Wiv your teef. Or else you step
on it and, — Smush it, Sir! I tell you!

Sometimes they grow wivout shells. That kind grows on