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"Look here, you men," he shouted, his gaze running over plug-hat, swollen nose, seaman's broad face, and the faces of the other suitors, "I'm Gideon Ward, of Smyrna, and I've been engaged to Miss Pharline Pike for fifteen years, and " "Then I don't blame her for changing her mind, ye bloody landlubber!" snorted the seaman, smacking his hand upon his folded paper.
The preacher she sent away off for, because she was bound to git some'n extra, was installed at the hotel. He is a wheel-hoss; he dressed as fine as a fiddle, with a plug-hat and dashboard shoes, and had a long jimswinger coat that come to his knees.
Then he got his notes and sat down and began to check off, for first purchase, the luxuries which he should earliest wish to secure. "Horse buggy cutter lap-robe patent-leathers dog plug-hat church-pew stem-winder new teeth SAY, Aleck!" "Well?" "Ciphering away, aren't you? That's right. Have you got the twenty thousand invested yet?"
He shows up on the coachin' parties, and he's got himself a reg'lar English coachman's rig, with boots outside his trouse's, and a long coat and a fuzzy plug-hat: I tell you, he looks gay! He don't spend his winters at Lion's Head: he is off to Europe about as soon as the house closes in the fall, and he keeps bringin' home new dodges.
"I desire to say, as a clergyman along evangelical lines, and not a settled pastor," said the man in the fuzzy plug-hat, "that I do not approve of this person's violent language. I have seen him once before to-day, and he appeared singularly vulgar and unrefined. He used violent language then.
"What you want to do is to take a couple of years at Iowa City and then come back here and jump right into the political arena and toot your horn. They'll elect you twice as quick if you come back here with a high collar and a plug-hat, even these grangers. They distrust a man in 'hodden gray' no sort of doubt of it. Now you take my advice.
"I'll thank you for a word of direction. But I want to say, as a lowly follower of the Lord in evangelical lines that it is not seemly for two men to quarrel in public." Ward had been gaping at him in amazement. "I can tell ye right now," he cried, "that Miss Pharline Pike ain't hirin' no farm-hand that wears a plug-hat! There ain't no need of your goin' to her place."
It was a clean walk-over from start to finish. I had the bit in my teeth, an' I went ahead like the woods afire. I driv' around to Carrie's house, dressed to kill. I had on my plug-hat, silk vest, light-gray pants, dark-blue coat, and my new patent-leather shoes. I put the old gal in by me an' away we shot.
"We all know how the sheriff's office is run in this county." This statement was made by Talleyrand Sylvester, who came thrusting through the jam of the hall into the fore-room. "Squire," he whispered, hoarsely, "I've brought down them quedaws as you told me to. They're outside. Say the word and we'll light on that old steer in the plug-hat!"
Theoretically the pulpit is supposed to cannonade all sin of every variety and species, but, alas, it is usually too cowardly. The Spirit-filled man fears no one from Sandow down to Tom Thumb, from a plug-hat Bishop to a little pusilanimous dude preacher. It is not that ministers are unawares of the prevalence of black and ghastly crimes, but that they dare not speak openly against them.
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