John Smith was an ingenious Puddlefordian in the way of story-telling. He was almost equal to Ike Turtle. John was a great, stalwart, double-breasted fellow, who cared for nothing, not even himself; a compound made up of dare-devil ferocity, benevolence, and impudence. His feelings, whether of the higher or lower order, always ran to excess. He was an importation from Massachusetts, of fair education, and, from his recklessness of life, had drifted into Puddleford, like many other tempest-tossed vessels, stripped of spars and rigging. Smith's fancy and imagination were always at work. He had nicknamed two thirds of Puddleford, and there was something characteristic in the appellations bestowed. One small-eyed man, he called "Pink-Eye;" another, a bustling fellow, who made a very great noise on a very small capital, was known as "Bumble-bee;" another, a long-shanked, loose-jointed character, was "Giraffe;" Squire Longbow he christened "Old Night-Shade." Turtle was known as "Sky-Rocket;" Bates as "Little Coke;" the Colonel as "Puff-Ball." Indeed, not one man in twenty was recognized by his true name, so completely had Smith invested the people with titles of his own manufacture.
I recollect one of Smith's flights of imagination—one among many—for I cannot write out all his mental productions.
The Puddlefordians were met, as usual, at Bulliphant's. That was the place, we have seen, where all public opinion was created. Turtle, and Longbow, and Bates, and the whole roll, even down to Jim Buzzard, were present. The progress of the age was the subject.
Turtle thought "there was no cac'latin' what things would come to—steam and ingin-rubber were runnin' one etarnal race, and he guess'd they'd lay all opposition to the land, and bring on the millennium."
Bates said "the sciences were doin' sunthin', but they'd never make anybody better—human natur' was so shockin' wicked, that it would require a heap mor'n injin-rubber to rejuvify 'em."
Mr. Longbow requested Bates "to repeat that 'ere last word agin."
Bates said "it was 'rejuvify'—that is, 'drag out,' 'resurrect.'"
The Squire thanked Bates for his explanation.
The Colonel said there was such a thing as too much science. He professed to have lived a scientific life—that is, without work—but all the while he found some one a little more scientific, and he had never been able to hold his own anywhere. He had been stranded fourteen times in his life, owing to a press of science brought against him; but the most destructive science in the known world was that for the collection of debts. It deprived men of their liberty, their comforts, their property, their friends; and the manner in which this was all done was barbarous. He defied any man to produce as cool-blooded a thing as an execution at law, which was a branch of legal science.
Squire Longbow said—"A fiery facius (fieri facias) was one of the most ancientest writs which he issued, and there warn't nothin' cool-blooded or ramptious about it."