“‘You eternal yaller-faced, suck-egg son of er ——, what is it you ain’t mean ’nuff for me to call you? I tell you what!’ (an’ I hope to be forgiven for swearin’) I cussed him blue.
“Well, I was so outdone I didn’t wait for the boat to come back, for it was gettin’ ’most dark and too late for bar-huntin’ that day; ’sides, my wife she would be ’spectin’ me at the house, and might rais pertickler dust if I didn’t get thar in time; so I jumped on my ole hoss, an’ put for home. But the way I cussed and ’bused Arch when I got on the hoss, was er sin, an’ the further I got away from him the louder I hollered! I pledge you my word, you might er hearn me er mile.
“To make a long story short, the last word I sed to him, sez I:
“‘Arch, you’ve ’scaped me this time by er axident, but the next time you cross my path, I’ll larrup you worse nor the devil beatin’ tan-bark! I will, by hokey!’
“Whew!” whistled Mike, drawing a long breath. “I tell you what, I come the nearest wollopin’ that feller, not to do it, that ever you saw.”
At this moment Mike donned his coon-skin cap, and giving it a terrific _slam_, that brought it over his eyes, vanished.
I hope the day is not far distant, when drunkenness will be unknown in our highly-favoured country. The moral world is rising in its strength against the all-destroying vice, and though the monster still struggles, and stings, and poisons, with deadly effect, in many parts of our wide-spread territory, it is perceptibly wounded and weakened; and I flatter myself, if I should live to number ten years more, I shall see it driven entirely from the higher walks of life at least, if not from all grades of society. For the honour of my contemporaries, I would register none of its crimes or its follies; but, in noticing the peculiarities of the age in which I live, candour constrains me to give this vice a passing notice. The interview which I am about to present to my readers, exhibits it in its mildest and most harmless forms.
In the county of ——, and about five miles apart, lived old Hardy Slow and old Tobias Swift. They were both industrious, honest, sensible farmers, when sober; but they never visited their county-town without getting drunk; and then they were—precisely what the following narrative makes them.