's
dog--I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a reglar shepherd--or
ruther he was part bull and part shepherd--splendid animal; belonged to
parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the
Western Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his
sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got
nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than
a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his
remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the funeral.
There was fourteen yards in the piece.

'She wouldn't let them roll him up, but planted him just so--full length.
The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and they
had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn't
bury him--they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a monument.
And they nailed a sign on it and put--put on--put on it--sacred to--the
m-e-m-o-r-y--of fourteen y-a-r-d-s--of three-ply--car---pet--containing
all that was--m-o-r-t-a-l--of--of--W-i-l-l-i-a-m--W-h-e--'

Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier--his head
nodded, once, twice, three times--dropped peacefully upon his breast, and
he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were running down the boys' cheeks
--they were suffocating with suppressed laughter--and had been from the
start, though I had never noticed it. I perceived that I was "sold."
I learned then that Jim Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reached
a certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him from
setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure
which he had once had with his grandfather's old ram--and the mention of
the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him
get, concerning it. He always maundered off, interminably, from one
thing to another, till his whisky got the best of him and he fell asleep.
What the thing was that happened to him and his grandfather's old ram is
a dark mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out.

CHAPTER LIV.

Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia--it is the
case with every town and city on the Pacific coast. They are a harmless
race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than
dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom
think of resenting the vilest insults or the crue