s throat was bare
and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwart
miner of the period. On the pine table stood a candle, and its dim light
revealed "the boys" sitting here and there on bunks, candle-boxes,
powder-kegs, etc. They said:

"Sh--! Don't speak--he's going to commence."

THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM.

I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:

'I don't reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more
bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois
--got him of a man by the name of Yates--Bill Yates--maybe you might have
heard of him; his father was a deacon--Baptist--and he was a rustler,
too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful
Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my
grandfather when he moved west.

'Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson
--Sarah Wilkerson--good cretur, she was--one of the likeliest heifers that
was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. She
could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack. And spin?
Don't mention it! Independent? Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a
browsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn't
trot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was--no, it
warn't Sile Hawkins, after all--it was a galoot by the name of Filkins
--I disremember his first name; but he was a stump--come into pra'r meeting
drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary;
and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit
on old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly. She was a good soul--had a
glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to
receive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't
noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe,
or out to one side, and every which way, while t' other one was looking
as straight ahead as a spy-glass.

'Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it
was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it
wouldn't work, somehow--the cotton would get loose and stick out and look
so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way. She was
always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company
empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could