He put me in mind of a sick Adjutant, a
great tall hulkin' bird, that comes from the East Indgies, a'most as
high as a man, and most as knowin' as a Bluenose. I'd a gin a hundred
dollars to have had that chap as a show at a fair; tar and feathers
warn't half as nateral. You've seen a gal both larf and cry at the
same time, hain't you? Well, I hope I may be shot if I couldn't have
done the same. To see that critter come like a turkey out of a bag
at Christmas, to be fired at for ten cents a shot, was as good as a
play; but to look round and see the poverty--the half-naked children;
the old pine stumps for chairs; a small bin of poor, watery, yaller
potatoes in the corner; daylight through the sides and roof of the
house, lookin' like the tarred seams of a ship, all black where the
smoke got out; no utensils for cookin' or eatin'; and starvation
wrote as plain as a handbill on their holler cheeks, skinney fingers,
and sunk eyes--went right straight to the heart. I do declare I
believe I should have cried, only they didn't seem to mind it
themselves. They had been used to it, like a man that's married to
a thunderin' ugly wife, he gets so accustomed to the look of her
everlastin' dismal mug, that he don't think her ugly at all.
"Well, there was another chap a-settin' by the fire, and he DID look
as if he saw it, and felt it too; he didn't seem over half pleased,
you may depend.
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