"If a barber were as much given to the splitting of hairs, we'd never be more than half shaved."
"And if the instinct of the wolf prompted bristles to grow continuously, and if no barber cut them off, I could pick out a man whose beard would soon drag the ground."
Mr. Clem laid his hands upon the door-facing and snorted. "What ails you, sir?" the doctor asked, turning toward him, and Mr. Clem, without looking round, said: "Bob, they've got a fish over in Illinois they call the doctor. Hook one of them and you think you've got something, but pull him out and you find he's all bill. Come on and let's go after that snake."
We strode away without another word, the doctor tramping hard down the stairs just behind me. He followed us to the yard, and seeing Old Master standing near the garden gate, sheered off from our course. We strolled along the grass-fringed margin of the creek, and when we came to the rock whereon I had stood, listening to Mr. Clem's persuasive tongue, urging me to run away, the kindness and the life-long protection of my Master arose and smote me, for on that rock I had almost rebelled against him. I did not want to stop when the others halted, but Mr. Clem called me back. "Bob," said he, "I didn't always know the feeling you have for Dan, and it was here, not long ago, that I told him to run away—offered to furnish him money; but with a fidelity that I had forgotten existed among men, he refused."
Bob turned his face from us, but I saw his neck stiffen with resentment. There was something noble in his aspect, his head high, his hat off; and his hair, lying in waves, looked like the leaves of a wreath. But in a moment this was all gone and he looked as if a grief had fallen upon him. "Uncle Clem," said he, turning slowly toward the old man, "I wish you wouldn't give advice against the interest of one who is very near to me. If he were to run away, he would lose confidence in himself and his memory of the sunny days along this stream would but serve as a reproach to him."
"My dear boy," Mr. Clem replied, "if I had intended to give him further advice along the same line, I would not have mentioned it to you—would not have hinted that I had said anything. So, now, as far as that is concerned, you may rest at ease."
"All right, we'll say nothing more about it. Uncle Clem, do you think that I'm stilted in my talk?"
"Why, not any more so than the average boy in this part of the country. You know the Kentuckian is taught to talk with a flourish; it is in keeping with the pretense of his surroundings; he must be gallant with woman and lordly with man. No, you are not particularly stilted, but there is one branch of information that you are stubbornly overlooking—the horse. You have studied the orator, but I want to tell you that the horse has done quite as much to make Kentucky known as the orator. After all, oratory is nothing but talk, while there's action in a horse. And, by the way, who's that riding along the pike? Too far off or I'd yell at him. Good horse; no, little lame in the left hind foot. See, he don't move evenly."
"I can't tell from here," said master.
"Ah, hah, and that goes to prove what I say, that you haven't given enough study to that important subject. It isn't right for a man to cultivate one lobe of his mind and neglect the other. Man's mind, you know, has two lobes—one embracing the horse, and the other covering the human family and other little things. I wonder how much longer things are going to be as dull as they are now. Why, out in Illinois we had something every day to interest us, up hill and down, but here everything is on a dead level. There's not enough ginger in the air."