"Hello thar', Alfred Ricketts!—whut you doin' so fur 'way frum ole Lynchburg?"
I says to him he must a-made a mistake. And he says:
"Go on 'way, boy, an' quit yore foolin'! This is bound to be Alfred Ricketts 'at I uster know down in Lynchburg, Furginia. Leas'wise, ef 'tain't him it's his duplicate twin brother."
I tells him no, my name ain't Alfred Ricketts—it's Jeff Poindexter from Paducah, and I ain't never been in no place called Lynchburg in my whole life as I knows of.
He looks at me a minute in a kind of an onbelieving way and then he says he begs my pardon, but his excuse is that I'm the exact spit-and-image of this here Alfred Ricketts, which he says he's done played with him many's the time, when they was both boys together. He says he ain't never in all his born days seen two fellows which they wasn't no kin to each other and yet looked so much similar as him and me does. He says the way we favors each other is absolutely unanimous. He asks me to tell him again what my name is and I does so, and then he says to me:
"Whar'bouts you say you hails frum?"
I says:
"Paducah—tha's whar."
He shakes his head kind of puzzled.
"Paducah?" he says. "I ain't never heared tell of it. Whar is it—Tennessee or Arkansaw?"