The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century. It's a lazy Mississippi River town, a place where a boy can learn magical cures for warts, turn a fence-painting job into a leisurely con game, get lost in a cave, escape to an island, or attend his own funeral. It's a time when hooky is punished with a simple swatting and pockets bulge with firecrackers and dead rats; a time...

A horse in nineteenth-century England recounts his experiences with both good and bad masters. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.