"You can't blame me—the hog, you see,
Slipped through a cattle gate;
So kindly pen a check for ten,
The debt to liquidate."
However, the game didn't pan out as he expected, for there chanced to be a match for his genius in the office of the railroad, and shortly after Skeezer received the following poetic reply:
"Old 29 came down the line
And killed your hog, we know;
But razorbacks on railroad tracks
Quite often meet with woe.
"Therefore, my friend, we cannot send
The check for which you pine,
Just plant the dead; place o'er his head:
'Here lies a foolish swine.'"
As I have said, old Skeezer was always so dilapidated, and his person so soiled, that he had become a by-word of reproach in the neighborhood.
Even respectable darkies scorned to be seen in his society, and he found his only solace among his swine.
Why, his boy, just turned six, barelegged and far from clean himself, had some knowledge of his pa's shortcomings.
