more bigger than I
was, so I swallered my bile and sued him. His lawyer pled a set-off for
haulin'. He pled that the shuks was unsound; that they was barred by
limitashuns; that they didn't agree with his cow; and that he never got
any shuks from me. He spoak about a hour, and allooded to me as a
swindler about forty-five times. The bedevild jewry went out, and brot
in a verdik agin me for fifty cents, and four dollars for costs. I
hain't saved many shuks on my plantashun sence, and I don't intend to
til it gits less xpensiv! I look upon this as a warnin' to all foaks
_never to go to law about shuks_, or any other small sirkumstanse.

The next trubble I had was with a feller I hired to dig me a well. He
was to dig it for twenty dollers, and I was to pay him in meat and meal,
and sich like. The vagabon kep gittin' along til he got all the pay, but
hadn't dug nary a foot in the ground. So I made out my akkount, and sued
him as follers, to wit:

Old John Hanks, to Bill Arp Dr.
To 1 well you didn't dig $20

Well, Hanks, he hired a cheep lawyer, who rared round xtensively, and
sed a heep of funny things at my xpense, and finally dismissd my case
for what he calld its "ridikulum abserdum." I paid those costs, and went
home a sadder and a wiser man. I pulld down my little kabbin and mooved
it sum three hundred yards nigher the spring, and I hav drunk mity
little well water sence. I look upon this case as a warnin' to all foaks
_never to pay for enything till you git it, espeshally if it has to be
dug_.

The next law case I had I ganed it all by myself, by the forse of
sirkumstanses. I bot a man's note that was giv for the hire of a nigger
boy, Dik. Findin' he wouldn't pay me, I sued him before old Squire
Maginnis, beleevin' that it was sich a ded thing that the devil couldn't
keep me out of a verdik. The feller pled failur of konsiderashun, and
_non est faktum_, and _ignis fatuis_, and infansy, and that the nigger's
name wasn't Dik, but _Richard_. The old Squire was a powerful sesesh,
and hated the Yankees amazin'. So atter the lawyer had got thru his
speech and finished up his readin' from a book called "Greenleaf," I
rose forward to a attitood. Stretchin' forth my arms, ses I: "Squire
Maginnis, I would ax, sur, if this is a time in the histry of our
afflikted kountry when Yankee law books should be admitted in a Southern
patriot's Court? Hain't we got a State of our own and a code of Georgy
laws