s he, "Count me out."

Once the greatest of bullies provoked old Aaron Pennington, "the
strongest man in the world," who struck out from the shoulder and landed
his victim in the middle of the street. Here he lay in a helpless heap
until they carted him off to the hospital, where for a day or two he
flickered between life and death. "Foh God," said Pennington, "I barely
teched him."

This same bully threatened that when a certain mountain man came to town
he would "finish him." The mountain man came. He was enveloped in an
old-fashioned cloak, presumably concealing his armament, and walked
about ostentatiously in the proximity of his boastful foeman, who
remained as passive as a lamb. When, having failed to provoke a fight,
he had taken himself off, an onlooker said: "Bill, I thought you were
going to do him up?"

"But," says Bill, "did you see him?"

"Yes, I saw him. What of that?"

"Why," exclaimed the bully, "that man was a walking arsenal."

Aaron Pennington, the strong man just mentioned, was, in his younger
days, a river pilot. Billy Hite, a mite of a man, was clerk. They had
a disagreement, when Aaron told Billy that if he caught him on "the
harrican deck," he would pitch him overboard. The next day Billy
appeared whilst Aaron, off duty, was strolling up and down outside
the pilot-house, and strolled offensively in his wake. Never a hostile
glance or a word from Aaron. At last, tired of dumb show, Billy broke
forth with a torrent of imprecation closing with "When are you going to
pitch me off the boat, you blankety-blank son-of-a-gun and coward?"

Aaron Pennington was a brave man. He was both fearless and
self-possessed. He paused, gazed quizzically at his little tormentor,
and says he: "Billy, you got a pistol, and you want to get a pretext to
shoot me, and I ain't going to give it to you."

II

Among the hostels of Christendom the Galt House, of Louisville, for a
long time occupied a foremost place and held its own. It was burned to
the ground fifty years ago and a new Galt House was erected, not
upon the original site, but upon the same street, a block above, and,
although one of the most imposing buildings in the world, it could never
be made to thrive. It stands now a rather useless encumbrance--a whited
sepulchre--a marble memorial of the Solid South and the Kentucky that
was, on whose portal might truthfully appear the legend:

"_A jolly place it was in days of old,
But something ail