At this moment he saw me for the first time. He looked frightened and was about to run away when I called out—“Come back, you brute, and help me relieve the poor critter you have ruined forever.”
Upon this rough salutation he stopped, and with a taunting curl of the nose, replied. “You needn’t kick before you’re spurred. There an’t nobody here nor han’t been, nuther. I was just seeing how I could have fout.” So saying, he pointed to his plow, which stood in the corner of the fence about fifty yards from the battle ground. Would any man in his senses believe that a rational being could make such a fool of himself? All that I had heard and seen was nothing more nor less than a rehearsal of a knock-down and drag-out fight in which the young man had played all the parts for his own amusement. I went to the ground from which he had risen, and there were the prints of his two thumbs plunged up to the balls in the mellow earth, and the ground around was broken up as if two stags had been fighting on it.
As I resumed my journey, I laughed outright at this adventure, for it reminded me of Andrew Jackson’s attack on the United States bank. He had magnified it into a monster and then began to swear and gouge until he thought he had the monster on his back, and when the fight was over and he got up to look for his enemy, he could find none anywhere.
THE COUNTRY SQUIRE
Translated From The Spanish of Thomas Yriarte
A country squire of greater wealth than wit
(For fools are often blessed with fortune’s smile),
Had built a splendid house and furnished it
In splendid style.