could have been expected in the absence of his own continuous
guidance. In town he walked about the hotel, entertained the guests,
carved at the meals, hovered about the stores, the doctors' offices,
the wagon and blacksmith shops, discussed mercantile, medical,
mechanical questions with specialists in all these departments,
throwing into them all more and more of politics as the intimacy
between him and his patron and chief boarder increased.

Now as to that patron and chief boarder. The need of extending his
acquaintance seemed to press upon Mr. Pike with ever-increasing
weight. He was here and there, all over the county; at the
county-seat, at the county villages, at justices' courts, at
executors' and administrators' sales, at quarterly and protracted
religious meetings, at barbecues of every dimension, on hunting
excursions and fishing frolics, at social parties in all
neighborhoods. It got to be said of Mr. Pike that a freer acceptor of
hospitable invitations, or a better appreciator of hospitable
intentions, was not and needed not to be found possibly in the whole
state. Nor was this admirable deportment confined to the county in
which he held so high official position. He attended, among other
occasions less public, the spring sessions of the supreme and county
courts in the four adjoining counties: the guest of acquaintance old
and new over there. When starting upon such travels, he would
sometimes breakfast with his traveling companion in the village, and,
if somewhat belated in the return, sup with him also.

Yet, when at Flukers', no man could have been a more cheerful and
otherwise satisfactory boarder than Mr. Matt Pike. He praised every
dish set before him, bragged to their very faces of his host and
hostess, and in spite of his absences was the oftenest to sit and chat