"A. Yes, many a time.
"Q. Did you see anyone else buy and drink liquor in there?
"A. Yes, many a time.
"Q. Who was it?
"A. I have seen you do it lots of times."
Of course, the laugh was heavily against me, but I sat, as stoical as an Indian, and quietly asked him: "Anyone else, Joe?"
I have forgotten whether the suit terminated in conviction or acquittal, but I never think of it without a good laugh at the way the witness turned the tables on me, and am also reminded of what my old friend, Van Lowry, from the Winnebago country, once said of me: "That Flandrau is one of the most singular men I ever knew. He invariably makes a temperance speech over his whisky."
The gold pen with the jewelled head reposes among my frontier treasures, carefully wrapped up in several editorials cut from eastern papers, extolling my virtues as an apostle of temperance.
Moral: Don't believe everything you read in the papers.