on; you can't put em on, and
dey wouldn't stay ef you did."

"Oh DO shut up, and wait till something's started that you know
something about."

"Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can't mean to say I don't know about shirts,
when, goodness knows, I's toted home de washin' ever sence--"

"I tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. I only--"

"Why, Mars Tom, you said yo'self dat a letter--"

"Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a
metaphor."

That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says--rather
timid, because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:

"Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?"

"A metaphor's a--well, it's a--a--a metaphor's an illustration." He see
THAT didn't git home, so he tried again. "When I say birds of a feather
flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying--"

"But dey DON'T, Mars Tom. No, sir, 'deed dey don't. Dey ain't no
feathers dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits
till you catches dem birds together, you'll--"

"Oh, give us a rest! You can't get the simplest little thing through
your thick skull. Now don't bother me any more."

Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for
catching Tom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he
was a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put
together. You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and
that's the way to find out about birds. That's the way people does that
writes books about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and
tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it.
Their name is ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer
myself, because I always loved birds and creatures; and I started out to
learn how to be one, and I see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree,
singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open, and before I
thought I fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down from the
limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked him up and he was dead,
and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and
that, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over
his eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and,
laws! I couldn't see nothing more for the tears; and I hain't never
murdered no creature since that warn't doing me no harm, and I ain't
going to.

But I was aggravated about that welkin. I want