The trouble with Captain Johnson was, he was too superficial in his methods for his own interests and was not so smart as he thought himself. It was a long way from this place; yet I could not help reverting to one of the extremes of wastefulness, when, by a singular unfitness of season, just as I was deploring the loss of frying fat in making the dinner of two days ago, the woodman, or keeper of this place through the winter time, came with a complaint that he is getting no grease this summer tor his wife to make her winter's soap with, as he has been used to do, and that the waste from the kitchen is not sufficient to fatten over half the pigs he has supplied himself with, and his pork crop will be deplorably short. He intimates that his place is not worth much to him if shorn of these perquisites. This is a sad case, but none of us get any such perquisites in this house. The question is here how a good table can be set in a house that charges ten dollars a week when all the saving ways of turning one thing into another and using up everything by the appliance of skill such as the French are credited with in the same line are brought into requisition and carried out industriously, and not how many hogs can we fatten, or how many barrels of grease can we make. Poor John! By the time the little suet that comes on the closely trimmed meats has been used for shortening pie crusts and puddings, and the fat from the roasts and soups is used for frying and sauteing, there is hardly enough left for him to grease his boots with. I know from experience that thousands of meals are sold daily for from 20 to 25 cents that are allowed to cost 40 or 50 cents, not through what the people eat or want, but because of the unnecessary wastes of all kinds and the extraneous expenses, and the sellers of meals on those losing terms are only kept up by their beds, their bar profits, livery or other source of revenue.

John is a young man and was born too late. He would have been happy on Captain Johnson's steamboat on the Mississippi where the cooks made from 71/2 to 101/2 barrels of grease to sell for themselves every trip the boat made. It will be observed there was always a half barrel - that is where Captain Johnson comes in. He could neither read nor write, but he owned his steamboat and she was a good one - the America - carrying cotton, tobacco and pork from the city of N-------, State of T--------, to

New Orleans, and taking molasses and imported goods on the return trip. But New Orleans was the point the employes considered the beginning and the end of the trip. This used to take about three weeks on the average. On every trip up the boat used to take on a supply of pine knots at the mouth of Red River; that was racing fuel kept ready in case any boat came in sight, that it was necessary to beat; for the America could beat most of them. But before reaching Red River on the return trip, that stock of pine was exhausted; and there being nothing but Tennessee poplar and gum wood on the boat, it was no uncommon thing for the engineers to seize all the bacon shoulders and hams they could lay their hands on to mix with it to make more steam. The cooks thought that a very poor use to put fat bacon to, and, to prevent it, all they could lay their hands on, they cut up and laid snugly out of the engineers' reach in the bottom of their grease barrels. Captain Johnson, as may well be supposed, was averse to all such proceedings, and instituted a rule which none dared break, that no soap-grease man should take away the "slush" or any part of it before he had examined it. Does the reader think that that placed the boys in a bad fix? Not at all; they knew him well. So every trip on the day of reaching port he went down into the kitchen and rolled up his right sleeve.

"Well, boys, how many barrels of slush have you made this trip?" (This is where the politicians get the word "slush money"). "Only eight and a half, Captain, - been as saving on you as possible - it might have been ten barrels if we hadn't took good care."

"Eight - nine! why you villains - what do you mean, going to rob me out of my boat?"

"Captain, we had a big trip of passengers up, and a long trip, ana the meats were some fatter than usual, and this ain't so much as last trip by half a - "

"Let me see it - let me see it - well, why don't you bring me my long flesh fork - here - no, not that, the long one. Oh you infernal rascals, I know you. I began life as a cook myself, and I know you."

And with that Captain Johnson began forking the contents of the first full barrel over into the half-filled barrel that stood ready for it. By the time the full barrel was half emptied the half barrel was, of course, full; and, having no more room, he commenced forking over the next full barrel into that he had just quit, never reaching the bottom of any barrel in the row, but keeping up his talk all the while.

"You can't rob me, boys, I've got eyes and my eyes ain't sheep's eyes that you can pull the wool over - I've been a cook and I know the ropes - and - and I've pulled 'em all - there, now; I've got you, what's this?"

But it always proved to be a bare bone or something worthless; and so the farce was always carried out on every trip during the eight month's season, and the boys received $4 a barrel from the soap men for spending money as soon as the boat reached the wharf.

It stands in proof that human nature - even steamboat human nature - is not wholly depraved; that nobody ever wounded Captain Johnson's self-love by informing him how grossly he was being deceived. Suppose the boys beat him out of a hundred dollars over and above what was right; he must be dead before this; for he was well along in years at that time, and surely it was worth twice a hundred dollars to him to die in the happy belief that nobody had ever been able to pull the wool over his eves.