"Why," exclaimed the bully, "that man was a walking arsenal."
Aaron Pennington, the strong man just mentioned, was, in his younger days, a river pilot. Billy Hite, a mite of a man, was clerk. They had a disagreement, when Aaron told Billy that if he caught him on "the harrican deck," he would pitch him overboard. The next day Billy appeared whilst Aaron, off duty, was strolling up and down outside the pilot-house, and strolled offensively in his wake. Never a hostile glance or a word from Aaron. At last, tired of dumb show, Billy broke forth with a torrent of imprecation closing with "When are you going to pitch me off the boat, you blankety-blank son-of-a-gun and coward?"
Aaron Pennington was a brave man. He was both fearless and self-possessed. He paused, gazed quizzically at his little tormentor, and says he: "Billy, you got a pistol, and you want to get a pretext to shoot me, and I ain't going to give it to you."
Among the hostels of Christendom the Galt House, of Louisville, for a long time occupied a foremost place and held its own. It was burned to the ground fifty years ago and a new Galt House was erected, not upon the original site, but upon the same street, a block above, and, although one of the most imposing buildings in the world, it could never be made to thrive. It stands now a rather useless encumbrance--a whited sepulchre--a marble memorial of the Solid South and the Kentucky that was, on whose portal might truthfully appear the legend:
"_A jolly place it was in days of old, But something ails it now_"
Aris Throckmorton, its manager in the Thirties, the Forties and the Fifties, was a personality and a personage. The handsomest of men and the most illiterate, he exemplified the characteristics and peculiarities of the days of the river steamer and the stage coach, when "mine host" felt it his duty to make the individual acquaintance of his patrons and each and severally to look after their comfort. Many stories are told at his expense; of how he made a formal call upon Dickens--it was, in point of fact, Marryatt--in his apartment, to be coolly told that when its occupant wanted him he would ring for him; and of how, investigating a strange box which had newly arrived from Florida, the prevailing opinion being that the live animal within was an alligator, he exclaimed, "Alligator, hell; it's a scorponicum." He died at length, to be succeeded by his son John, a very different character. And thereby hangs a tale.