arn
to-night. Ef nobody objects, I'll app'int him. Come, Square, don't be
bashful. Walk up to the trough, fodder or no fodder, as the man said to
his donkey."

There was a general giggle at this, and many of the young swains took
occasion to nudge the girls alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose
of making them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure of
nudging. The Greeks figured Cupid as naked, probably because he wears so
many disguises that they could not select a costume for him.

The Squire came to the front. Ralph made an inventory of the
agglomeration which bore the name of Squire Hawkins, as follows:

1. A swallow-tail coat of indefinite age, worn only on state occasions^
when its owner was called to figure in his public capacity. Either the
Squire had grown too large or the coat too small.

2. A pair of black gloves, the most phenomenal, abnormal, and unexpected
apparition conceivable in Flat Creek district, where the preachers wore
no coats in the summer, and where a black glove was never seen except on
the hands of the Squire.

3. A wig of that dirty, waxen color so common to wigs. This one showed a
continual inclination to slip off the owner's smooth, bald pate, and the
Squire had frequently to adjust it. As his hair had been red, the wig
did not accord with his face, and the hair ungrayed was doubly
discordant with a countenance shrivelled by age.

4. A semicircular row of whiskers hedging the edge of the jaw and chin.
These were dyed a frightful dead-black, such a color as belonged to no
natural hair or beard that ever existed. At the roots there was a
quarter of an inch of white, giving the whiskers the appearance of
having been stuck on.

5. A pair of spectacles "with tortoise-shell rim." Wont to slip off.

6. A glass eye, purchased of a peddler, and differing in color from its
natural mate, perpetually getting out of focus by turning in or out.

7. A set of false teeth, badly fitted, and given to bobbing up and
down.

8. The Squire proper, to whom these patches were loosely attached.

It is an old story that a boy wrote home to his father begging him to
come West, because "mighty mean men get into office out here." But Ralph
concluded that some Yankees had taught school in Hoopole County who
would not have held a high place in the educational institutions of
Massachusetts. Hawkins had some New England idioms, but they were well
overlaid by a Western pronunciation.

"Ladies and