“Don’t you discern no signs or signal smokes of any foreign bodies?” says Old Stewart, a bit pettish, same as if he can’t onderstand sech blindness.
“None whatever!” observes the Doc.
“It’s shore strange,” retorts Old Stewart, still in his complainin’ tones; “thar’s two hundred niggers, a brick house an’ a thousand acres of bottom land gone down that throat, an’ I sort o’ reckons some traces of ’em would show.”
That’s the trouble with Old Stewart from the immacyoolate standpint of the better classes; they says he overdrinks. But while it’s convincin’ to sooperior folks an’ ones who’s goin’ to church an’ makin’ a speshulty of it, it don’t sep’rate Old Stewart from the warm affections of the rooder masses—the catfish an’ quinine aristocracy that dwells along the Missouri; they’re out for him to the last sport.
“Suppose the old Gov’nor does drink,” says one, “what difference does that make? Now, if he’s goin’ to try sootes in co’t, or assoome the pressure as a preacher, thar’d be something in the bluff. But it don’t cut no figger whether a gov’nor is sober or no. All he has to do is pardon convicts an’ make notaries public, an’ no gent can absorb licker s’fficient to incapac’tate him for sech trivial dooties.”
One of the argyments they uses ag’in Old Stewart is about a hawg-thief he pardons. Old Stewart is headin’ up for the state house one mornin’, when he caroms on a passel of felons in striped clothes who’s pesterin’ about the grounds, tittivatin’ up the scenery. Old Stewart pauses in front of one of ’em.
“What be you-all in the pen’tentiary for?” says Old Stewart, an’ he’s profoundly solemn.
Tharupon the felon trails out on a yarn about how he’s a innocent an’ oppressed person. He’s that honest an’ upright—hear him relate the tale—that you’d feel like apol’gizin’. Old Stewart listens to this victim of intrigues an’ outrages ontil he’s through; then he goes romancin’ along to the next. Thar’s five wronged gents in that striped outfit, five who’s as free from moral taint or stain of crime as Dave Tutt’s infant son, Enright Peets Tutt.
But the sixth is different. He admits he’s a miscreant an’ has done stole a hawg.
“However did you steal it, you scoundrel?” demands Old Stewart.