ught in this item: "Joseph Nevison, of
South McAlester, I. T., is visiting his mother, Mrs. Julia Nevison, at
234 South Fifth Street."

We sent the reporter out for more about Joe Nevison and at noon George
Kirwin hurried down to the little home below the tracks. From these two
searchers after truth we learned that Joe Nevison's mother had brought
him home from the Indian Territory mortally sick. Half-a-dozen of us who
had played with him as boys went to see him that evening, and found a
wan, haggard man with burned-out black eyes, lying in a clean white bed.
He seemed to know each of us for a moment and spoke to us through his
delirium in a tired, piping voice--like the voice of the little boy who
had been our leader. He called us by forgotten nicknames, and he hummed
at a tune that we had not heard for a score of years. Then he piped out
"While the Landlubbers Lie Down Below, Below, Below," and followed that
with "Green Grass Growing all Around, all Around," and that with the
song about the "Tonga Islands," his voice growing into a clearer alto as
he sang. His mother tried to quiet him, but he smiled his dead smile at
her through his cindery eyes, shook his head and went on. When he had
lain quiet for a moment, he turned to one of us and said: "Dock, I'm
goin' up and dive off that stump--a back flip-flop--you dassent!" Pretty
soon he seemed to come up snuffing and blowing and grinning and said,
"Last man dressed got to chaw beef." Then he cried: "Dock's it--Dock's
it; catch 'im, hold him--there he goes--duck him, strip him. O well, let
him go if he's go'n' to cry. Say, boys, I wish you fellers'd come over
t' my stick horse livery stable--honest I got the best hickory horse you
ever see. Whoa, there--whoa now, I tell you. You Pilliken Dunlevy let me
harness you; there, put it under your arm, and back of your neck--no I
ain't go'n' to let you hold it--I'll jerk the tar out of you if you
don't go. Whe-e-e that's the way to go, hol--hold on, whoa there. Back
up. Let's go over to Jim's and run on his track. Say, Jim, I got the
best little pacer in the country here--get up there, Pilliken," and he
clucked and sawed his arms, and cracked an imaginary whip. When George
came in, the face on the bed brightened and the treble voice said:
"Hello Fatty--we've been waitin' for you. Now let's go on. What you got
in your wagon--humph--bet it's a pumpkin. Did old Boswell chase you?"
and then he laughed, and turned away from us. His tre