couldn't be any ca'mer, and yet, all of a sudden,
out it come. I've often thought of that time, and I can remember just
the way everything looked, same as if it was only last week. I can see
it all: beautiful rolling country with woods and fields and lakes
for hundreds and hundreds of miles all around, and towns and villages
scattered everywheres under us, here and there and yonder; and the
professor mooning over a chart on his little table, and Tom's cap
flopping in the rigging where it was hung up to dry. And one thing in
particular was a bird right alongside, not ten foot off, going our way
and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the time; and a railroad
train doing the same thing down there, sliding among the trees and
farms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now and then a
little puff of white; and when the white was gone so long you had almost
forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was the whistle.
And we left the bird and the train both behind, 'WAY behind, and done it
easy, too.

But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorant
blatherskites, and then he says:

"Suppose there's a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is
making a picture of them. What is the MAIN thing that that artist has
got to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the
minute you look at them, hain't he? Of course. Well, then, do you want
him to go and paint BOTH of them brown? Certainly you don't. He paints
one of them blue, and then you can't make no mistake. It's just the same
with the maps. That's why they make every State a different color; it
ain't to deceive you, it's to keep you from deceiving yourself."

But I couldn't see no argument about that, and neither could Jim. Jim
shook his head, and says:

"Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle-heads dem painters is, you'd
wait a long time before you'd fetch one er DEM in to back up a fac'.
I's gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you'self. I see one of 'em
a-paintin' away, one day, down in ole Hank Wilson's back lot, en I went
down to see, en he was paintin' dat old brindle cow wid de near horn
gone--you knows de one I means. En I ast him what he's paintin' her for,
en he say when he git her painted, de picture's wuth a hundred dollars.
Mars Tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him so. Well,
sah, if you'll b'lieve me, he jes' shuck his head, dat painter did, en
went on a-dobbin'. Bless you,