ely the reverse.

"The way I got acquainted with Pete was when he put his hard coin
agin a French tin-horn's race-track game. There was little horses
running around a board, and you put your money where you thought it
would win, but you never thought right, because the Dago had a
stick under the table that pulled them races to suit his fancy.

"It stood to reason that taking money off'n a man who'd play such a
game was inhumanity in the first degree, so when Pete's last dollar
departed I entered that horse-race with a gun, just as I had no
business to, and I says to the tin-horn, 'Look-a-here, you put that
money across the board, or I'll play a tune on you,' and so he
shouldn't think I was interferin' out of an idle curiosity, I
pointed the weapon at him.

"'O-rrr righ'!' says he; 'Tooty-sweet.' I lost a good deal of
patience on the spot. You see, it seemed like he was tryin' to be
entertaining. I say, by way of an amoosin' remark, that I'm goin'
to play a tune on that tin-horn, and he gayly tells me to toot
sweet! Well, I don't want to harrow your feelin's. Anyway, Pete
got his money and Frenchy returned to the land where his style of
remarks was more appreciated, a little later.

"So Pete, he grasps my hand with tears in his eyes and considerable
blood on his nose, where I'd accidently hit him with the Dago, and
he says I'm his friend forever, and he'll show me what friendship
really means. That's why I'm inclined to say that for rest and
recreation I'll take an enemy. Whether our friend and brother, Mr.
Douglass, was the luckiest or unluckiest man on earth, I've never
been able to figger out. He personally explored the bottom of
every old prospeck hole in the country. He was romantic by
disposition, Pete was, and loved to go for walks at night. If he
didn't turn up for breakfast I took down the coil of rope and
proceeded until I found the right hole, because you could bet as
safe that he was at the bottom of one of 'em as you could that the
bottom itself was there.

"When I asked him, 'How come you to do it, Pete?' he allus
answered, 'I dunno; I got to thinkin' about somethin'.' If
anything valooable had occurred to Pete, whilest he was in one of
them thinking spells, he'd have been one of these here geniuses.

"When a saw mill sent a slab sailin', or bust a belt, Pete was at
the center of the disturbed districk. He fell off every foot log
in ten miles; why, he was drowned fourteen times in three