"Colonel, one of my children is dead, and I haven't any thing to bury the child in."
The Colonel, a kind-hearted gentleman, had a neat coffin made; lent the old man horses and an ambulance, and attended personally to the burial, at which the old man took on "amazingly."
An hour or two after the funeral, old Stonnicker strolled up to the Colonel's quarters.
"Colonel," said he, as the tears rolled down his cheeks; "Colonel, what shall I do?"
The Colonel, thinking he was mourning over the loss of his lately-buried child, replied:
"O, bear up under such trials like a man."
"Wal, I know I orto; but, Colonel, can't you do something for me? It is too bad! I feel so miserable! Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"
"O, come, be a man," said the Colonel; "any thing I can do for you shall be done, willingly."
"O, Colonel! I knowed it; I knowed it. My old woman allers said you was a fust-rate feller; and, Colonel, ef you'll only pay me for them two stacks of hay your men took from my field, I shall be mighty glad, for I want the money."
It is needless to say that the Colonel's sympathies instantly ceased, and, turning on his heel, he might have been heard to say, "O, d——n you and your hay."