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Potter got 23 and i got 18. tonite i put my toads in a box in the kitchen after the folks went to bed. in the night they all got out of the box and began to hop round and peep mother heard it and waked father and they lissened. when i waked up father was coming threw my room with a big cane and a little tin lamp. he had put on his britches and was in his shirt tale, and i said, what are you going to lick me for now i havent done nothing and he said, keep still there is some one down stairs and mother said dont go down George and father said, lissen i can hear him giving a whistle for his confedrit, i will jump in and give him a whack on the cokonut. i had forgot all about the toads and you bet i was scart. well father he crep down easy and blowed out his lite and opened the door quick and jest lammed round with his club. then i heard him say what in hell have i stepped on, bring a lite here. then i though of the toads and you bet i was scarter than before, mother went down with a lite and then i heard him say, i will be cussed the whole place is ful of toads. then mother said did you ever. and father said he never did, and it was some more of that dam boys works and he yelled upstairs for me to come down and ketch them. so i went down and caught them and put them out all but 2 that father had stepped on and they had to be swep up. then all the folks came down in their nitegounds and i went up stairs lively and got into bed and pulled the clothes round me tite, but it dident do enny good for father came up and licked me. he dident lick me very hard becaus i gess he was glad it wasent a berglar and if it hadent been for me it might have been berglars insted of toads.
The armies o' Patterson an' McDowell hem in all this forest, an' I reckon mebbe it wuz a good thing fur you that the storm came up an' you got past in it. Wuz you expectin', Johnny Reb, to ride right into the Yankee pickets with that Confedrit uniform on?" "I don't know exactly what I intended to do. I meant to see in the morning. I didn't know I was so far inside their lines."
The train started on to pay a visit to old man Scroggs. "Say, old pard," asked Si as his wagon drove past, "is there any rebs 'round here?" "There wuz a few Confedrit critter-men ridin' 'bout hyar this mawnin'; mebby ye'll run agin 'em 'afore night." "How many o' your boys is among em?" "We'uns is all Union." "Jest as long as we're 'round, I s'pose!" said Si.
I had a lot of new Confedrit notes that I'd got from my cousin, who was in the tobacco business in Memphis. They was great curiosities, unt every man who had a Mexican dollar wanted to trade it for a Confedrit dollar. "There was no use tryin' to count the men might as well have tried to count the leaves on the trees, so I begun to count the regiments.
Lincoln above others, who waited eagerly for the next letter in the press. He requested the presentation of the author, John Locke, and thanked him face to face neither, like the augurs, able to keep his face for such antidotes to the blues. He said to a friend of "the Postmaster at Confedrit X-rodes": "If 'Petroleum' would impart his talent to me, I would swap places with him!"
"The Cap'n," said another, with an air of superior information, "has left two bairls of Confedrit money, which he 'spected 'ud be good some day er nuther." This statement gave rise to a discussion of the speculative value of Confederate money; but in a little while the conversation returned to the murder.
Or finally, this, which has the perfect tone of the great French moralists: "It iz a verry delicate job to forgive a man without lowering him in his own estimashun, and yures too." See how the moralistic note is struck in the field of political satire. It is 1866, and "Petroleum V. Nasby," writing from "Confedrit X Roads," Kentucky, gives Deekin Pogram's views on education.
"These flabbergasted fools won't take greenbacks. I offered the woman to-day some, and she said she wouldn't be found dead with 'em. She wanted Confedrit money. You may call it counterfeitin', but the whole Southern Confederacy is counterfeit, from its President down to the lowest Corporil. A dollar or two more or less won't make no difference.
In fact, he wouldn't hav' drawd his sword at all, only he had a large stock of military clothes on hand, which he didn't want to waste. He sez the colored man is right, and he will at once go to New York and open a Sabbath School for negro minstrels. The surrender of R. Lee, J. Johnston and others leaves the Confedrit Army in a ruther shattered state.
Even those humorists who mark epochs in the history of American provincial and political satire, like Seba Smith with his Major Jack Downing, Newell with his Papers of Orpheus C. Kerr, "Petroleum V. Nasby's" Letters from the Confedrit X Roads, Shillaber's Mrs. Partington all these have disappeared round the turn of the long road. "Hans Breitman gife a barty Vhere ish dot barty now?"
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