can't
help it. And that is the reason, he says, God can be depended on to pull
the human race through in the end, even if appearances do look to be
agin His doing it sometimes, fur He started it to growing in the first
place and that-a-way He got interested personal in it. And that is the
main idea, he says, he has all the time been trying to get into that
there poetry of his'n. But he reckons he ain't got her in. Leastways,
he says, no one has never seen her there but the doctor and the old lady
and himself. Well, for my part, I never would of seen it there myself,
but when he said it out plain like that any one could of told what he
meant.

You hadn't orter lay things up agin folks if the folks can't help 'em.
And I will say Daddy Withers was a fine old boy in spite of his poetry.
Which it never really done any harm, except being expensive to him, and
lots will drink that much up and never figger it an expense, but one
of the necessities of life. We went all over his place with him, and we
noticed around his house a lot of tin cans tacked up to posts and trees.
They was fur the birds to drink out of, and all the birds around there
had found out about it, and about Daddy Withers, and wasn't scared of
him at all. He could get acquainted with animals, too, so that after a
long spell sometimes they would even let him handle them. But not if any
one was around. They was a crow he had made a pet of, used to hop around
in front of him, and try fur to talk to him. If he went to sleep in the
front yard whilst he was reading, that crow had a favourite trick of
stealing his spectacles off'n his nose and flying up to the ridgepole
of the house, and cawing at him. Once he had been setting out a row of
tomato plants very careful, and he got to the end of the row and turned
around, and that there crow had been hopping along behind very sollum,
pulling up each plant as he set it out. It acted like it had done
something mighty smart, and knowed it, that crow. So after that the old
man named him Satan, fur he said it was Satan's trick to keep things
from growing. They was some blue and white pigeons wasn't scared to come
and set on his shoulders; but you could see the old man really liked
that crow Satan better'n any of them.

Well, we hung around all afternoon listening to the old man talk, and
liking him better and better. First thing we knowed it was getting along
toward supper time. And nothing would do but we must stay to supper,