God has let me live
long enough to find out I was in the wrong--dead wrong. There are
Jews and Yankees. I useter hate 'em worse'n sin--but now what do you
reckon?"

"One on 'em busted a plate on yo' head?" asked Bud.

"Jesus Christ was a Jew, an' Cap'n Tom jined the Yankees."

"Bud," he said cheerily after a pause, "did I ever tell you the story
of this here Ben Butler here?"

Bud's eyes grew bright and he slapped his leg again.

"Well," said the old man, brightening up into one of his funny moods,
"you know my first wife was named Kathleen--Kathleen Galloway when
she was a gal, an' she was the pretties' gal in the settlement an'
could go all the gaits both saddle an' harness. She was han'som' as a
three-year-old an' cu'd out-dance, out-ride, out-sing an' out-flirt
any other gal that ever come down the pike. When she got her Sunday
harness on an' began to move, she made all the other gals look like
they were nailed to the roadside. It's true, she needed a little
weight in front to balance her, an' she had a lot of ginger in her
make-up, but she was straight and sound, didn't wear anything but the
harness an' never teched herself anywhere nor cross-fired nor hit her
knees."

"Good--great!" said Bud, slapping his leg.

"O, she was beautiful, Bud, with that silky hair that 'ud make a
thoroughbred filly's look coarse as sheep's wool, an' two
mischief-lovin' eyes an' a heart that was all gold. Bud--Bud"--there
was a huskiness in the old man's voice--"I know I can tell you
because it will never come back to me ag'in, but I love that Kathleen
now as I did then. A man may marry many times, but he can never love
but once. Sometimes it's his fust wife, sometimes his secon', an'
often it's the sweetheart he never got--but he loved only
one of 'em the right way, an' up yander, in some other star, where
spirits that are alike meet in one eternal wedlock, they'll be one
there forever."

"Her daddy, old man Galloway, had a thoroughbred filly that he named
Kathleena for his daughter, an' she c'ud do anything that the gal
left out. An' one day when she took the bit in her teeth an' run a
quarter in twenty-five seconds, she sot 'em all wild an' lots of
fellers tried to buy the filly an' get the old man to throw in the
gal for her keep an' board."

"I was one of 'em. I was clerkin' for the old man an' boardin' in the
house, an' whenever a young feller begins to board in a house where
there is a thoroughbred gal, the nex' thin