"'It's evident,' I says, 'that you never hears of Mollie Hines.'
"'No, never once,' he replies; 'is this yere Miss Hines a poet?'
"Is Mollie Hines a poet!' I repeats, for my scorn at the mere idee kind o' stiffens its knees an' takes to buckin' some. 'Mollie Hines could make that Locksley Hall gent you was readin' from, or even the party who writes Watt's Hymns, go to the diskyard.' An' then I repeats some forty of them stanzas, whereof that one I jest now recites is a speciment.
"What does this pulpit gent say? He see I has him cinched, an' he's plumb mute. He confines himse'f to turnin' up his nose in disgust like Bill Storey does when his father-in-law horsewhips him."
Following this, the Old Cattleman and I wrapped ourselves in thoughtful smoke, for the space of five minutes, as ones who pondered the genius of "The Nightingale of Big Bone Lick"—Mollie Hines on the banks of the Possom Trot. At last my friend broke forth with a question.
"Whoever is them far-off folks you-all was tellin' me is related to Injuns?"
"The Japanese." I replied. "Undoubtedly the Indians and the Japanese are of the same stock."
"Which I'm foaled like a mule," said the old gentleman, "a complete prey to inborn notions ag'in Injuns. I wouldn't have one pesterin' 'round me more'n I'd eat off en the same plate with a snake. I shore has aversions to 'em a whole lot. Of course, I never sees them Japs, but I saveys Injuns from feathers to moccasins, an' comparin' Japs to Injuns, I feels about 'em like old Bill Rawlins says about his brother Jim's wife."
"And how was that?" I asked.
The afternoon was lazy and good, and I in a mood to listen to my rambling grey comrade talk of anybody or anything.