"Coon on yer shoulder worth less'n what he is anywhere."He sat in meditation—as if, indeed, he were resting in the wilderness. A cannon, not a hundred feet away, shook the windows of Hillsborough with a loud explosion for every star on the flag. A perpetual fusillade of fire-crackers seemed to suggest the stripes. Accustomed to woodland silences, the Emperor's feeling was, in a measure, like that of his coon. The "morning salute" ended presently, and then he uttered an exclamation which indicated clearly that he had been losing ground in his late struggle with Satan.
One of the guides with whom he had sat in the store at Pitkin came near. "Had yer tooth drawed?" was the question he put to the Emperor.
Strong was now looking at the empty cage. "Had my coon d-drawed," he answered.
"Where is he?"
"Up-s-stairs." Strong pointed in the direction of the coon's refuge.
Silas was now the centre of an admiring company. His former pupil had brought the president of the corporation of Hillsborough to meet him. The official invited Strong to participate in the games. The Emperor was willing to do anything to oblige, and walked with his new acquaintance to the public square.
A trial at lifting and carrying was the first number on the programme. The contestants leaned, with hands behind them, while others on a raised platform began to heap bags of oats upon their backs and shoulders. Loaded to the limit of their strength, they carried the burden as far as they were able and flung it down. One after another tried, and the last carried nine bags a distance of seven feet and was rewarded with many cheers.
It was Strong's turn now. He bent his broad back, and the loaders began to burden him. At ten they stopped, but Strong called for more. Three others were heaped upon him, and slowly he began to move away. One could see only his legs beneath his burden, which towered far above him. Ten feet beyond the farthest mark he bore the bags and let them down. The people began cheering, and many came to shake his hand and feel the sinews in his arms and shoulders. Of the trial at scale-lifting a woodsman who stood near gave this illuminating description, "When they all got through, Strong put on two hundred more an' raised his neck an' lifted, an' the bar come up like a trout after a fly." Silas Strong stood, his coat off, his trousers tucked in his boots, looking soberly at the people who cheered him. One eye was wide open, the other partly closed. There were wrinkles above his wide eye, and his faded felt hat, tilted backward and to one side, left his face uncovered. He had a new and grateful sense of being "ahead," but seemed to wonder if so much brute strength were altogether creditable.
Master was to address the people, and Strong was invited to sit behind the speaker's table with the select of the county. He accompanied the president of the corporation to the platform in the park, his pack-basket on his arm. More than a thousand men and women had gathered in front of them when the chairman introduced the young orator.
The speech delighted Silas Strong, and he summed it up in his old memorandum-book as follows: