"By nacher I'm a patriot, cradle born and cradle bred; my Americanism, second to none except that of wolves an' rattlesnakes an' Injuns an' sim'lar cattle, comes in the front door an' down the middle aisle; an' yet, son, I'm free to reemark that thar's one day in the year, an' sometimes two, when I shore reegrets our independence, an' wishes thar had been no Yorktown an' never no Bunker Hill."
The old cattleman tasted his glass with an air weary to the borders of dejection; after which he took a pathetic puff at his pipe. I knew what had gone wrong. This was the Fifth of July. We had just survived a Fourth of unusual explosiveness, and the row and racket thereof had worn threadbare the old gentleman's nerves.
"Yes, sir," he continued, shoving a 'possum-colored lock back from his brow, "as I suffers through one of them calamities miscalled cel'brations, 145 endoorin' the slang-whangin' of the orators an' bracin' myse'f ag'inst the slam-bangin' of the guns, to say nothin' of the firecrackers an' kindred Chinese contraptions, I a'preeciates the feelin's of that Horace Walpole person Colonel Sterett quotes in his Daily Coyote as sayin', 'I could love my country, if it ain't for my countrymen.'
"Still, comin' down to the turn, I reckon it merely means, when all is in, that I'm gettin' too plumb old for comfort. It's five years now since I dare look in the glass, for fear I'd be tempted to count the annyooal wrinkles on my horns.
"It's mighty queer about folks. Speakin' of cel'brations, for thousands of years the only way folks has of expressin' any feelin' of commoonal joy, that a-way, is to cut loose in limitless an' onmeanin' uproar. Also, their only notion of a public fest'val is for one half of the outfit to prance down the middle of the street, while the other half banks itse'f ag'inst the ediotic curb an' looks at 'em.
"People in the herd ain't got no intelligence. We speaks of the lower anamiles as though we just has it on 'em completely in the matter 146 of intelligence, but for myse'f I ain't so shore. The biggest fool of a mule-eared deer savvys enough to go feedin' up the wind, makin' so to speak a skirmish line of its nose to feel out ambushes. Any old bull elk possesses s'fficient wisdom to walk in a half-mile circle, as a concloodin' act before reetirin' for the night, so that with him asleep in the center, even if the wind does shift, his nose'll still get ample notice of whatever man or wolf may take to followin' his trail.
"That's what them 'lower anamiles' does. An' now I asks, what man, goin' about his numbskull dest'nies, lookin' as plumb wise as a too-whoo owl at noon, ever shows gumption equal to keepin' the constant wind in his face, or has the sense to go walkin' round himse'f as he rolls into his blankets, same as that proodent elk? After all, I takes it that these yere Fo'th of Jooly upheavals is only one among the ten thousand fashions in which hoomanity eternally onbuckles in expressin' its imbecil'ty.
"Which I certainly do get a heap disgusted at times with the wild beast called man. With all his bluffs about bein' so mighty sagacious, I can sit yere an' see that, speakin' mental, he 147 ain't better than an even break with turkey gobblers. Even what he calls his science turns finally out with him to be but the accepted ignorance of to-day; an' he puts in every to-morrow of his existence provin' what a onbounded jackass rabbit he's been the day before. It's otherwise with them lower anamiles; what they knows they knows."
Plainly, something had to be done to fortify my old friend. I fell back, quite as a matter of course, upon that first aid to the injured, another drink, and motioned the black waiter to the rescue. It did my old friend good, that drink, the first fruits of which easier if not better condition being certain fresh accusations against himself.
"The trooth is, I'm a whole lot onused to these yere Fo'th of Jooly outbursts; an' so I ondoubted suffers from 'em more keenly, that a-way, than the av'rage gent. You see we never has none of 'em in Wolfville; leastwise we never does but once. On that single festive occasion we shore stubs our toe some plentiful, stubs it to that degree, in fact, that we never feels moved to buck the game ag'in. Once is enough for Wolfville.