“That’s it.”
“Very well. Was he a good man, and——”
“There—I see that; don’t put up another chip till I look at my hand. A good man, says you? Pard, it ain’t no name for it. He was the best man that ever—pard, you would have doted on that man. He could lam any galoot of his inches in America. It was him that put down the riot last election before it got a start; and everybody said he was the only man that could have done it. He waltzed in with a spanner in one hand and a trumpet in the other, and sent fourteen men home on a shutter in less than three minutes. He had that riot all broke up and prevented nice before anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow. He was always for peace, and he would have peace—he could not stand disturbances. Pard, he was a great loss to this town. It would please the boys if you would chip in something like that and do him justice. Here once when the Micks got to throwing stones through the Methodis’ Sunday-school windows, Buck Fanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon and took a couple of six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday-school. Says he, ‘No Irish need Apply!’ And they didn’t. He was the bulliest man in the mountains, pard! He could run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and hold more tanglefoot whisky without spilling than any man in seventeen counties. Put that in, pard—it’ll please the boys more than anything you could say. And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother.”
“Never shook his mother?”
“That’s it—any of the boys will tell you so.”
“Well, but why should he shake her?”
“That’s what I say—but some people does.”
“Not people of any repute.”
“Well, some that averages pretty so-so.”
“In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his own mother ought to——”