far away that the old
man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw
out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he
would. I got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till
the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark.
While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort
of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in
town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at.
A body would 'a' thought he was Adam--he was just all mud. Whenever
his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment. This
time he says:

"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like.
Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a
man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety
and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son
raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for
_him_ and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call
_that_ govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge
Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what
the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and
up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets
him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that
govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes
I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes,
and I _told_ 'em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em
heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave
the blamed country and never come a-near it ag'in. Them's the very
words. I says, look at my hat--if you call it a hat--but the lid
raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and
then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved
up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I--such a hat for me
to wear--one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my
rights.

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here.
There was a free nigger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as
a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the
shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine
clothes as wha