“Pooty soon the balloon come down about house high and druv over toward the dee-pot. I was a hopin’ she’d catch on the telegraph wire, but she skimm’d over, like a swallow over a fence, and immediately riz up tree high agin, where scrape, slap, slash, she went into an ole pine that stood out alone in the field. I was scratched pooty bad, but hung on to the limbs, and arter a while slid down the tree leavin’ the balloon hangin’ in the tree-top. Great turnips! if all Tuckersville wasn’t down thar in five minutes. Thar war young ‘uns runnin’ around half-dressed, with corn-dodgers in their hands, and wimmin with babies in their arms. It was like a dog fight, only, as the feller said when describin’ the nigger by the mulatter, it was more so.
“GO IN, CRIPPLE.”
“The train was delayed half an hour that mornin’, ’cause the engineer, conductor and all hands jumped off the cars and ran down to the balloon. Peg-leg Dibbly, the Mexican war veteran, was thar, hobblin’ around among the rest. He was in such a hurry to git down to the tree he wouldn’t go around by the road, but started in to take a short cut across the marsh with the crowd. And he had a sweet, sweatin’ time of it too, now I can assure you. First his cane would stick, and just about the time he would git that out, down would slide his iron-shod leg fully a foot into the mud, and stake him thar like a scarecrow. Then he would look down to where the people were standin’, and jerk and swear until the want of breath only would make him let up. He got down thar after a while though, but he had to crawl considerable before he could do it; and arter he got thar he was bobbin’ here and bobbin’ thar, tryin’ to git a better look up into the tree, until at last he stumbled and fell across one of Dud Davis’ young ‘uns, and gin her left leg a compound fractur’. She set up a screamin’, and he was so weak and frightened he couldn’t git up agin no how, but lay thar gruntin’, and sprawlin’, and kickin’ his one leg around. The blacksmith was thar himself, and when he seed his young ’un down in the mud with her leg broke, you never seed a man so mad in all your born days. He jest ran and grabbed the old pensioner by the coat collar, and slung him mor’n fifteen feet, landin’ him slidin’ on his back in the mud, like a crawfish.
A RIGHT ANGLED TRY-ANKLE.
“About the same time Tubbs, the cooper, was a lookin’ up, and he seed a bough springin’ up, and he allowed the balloon was comin’ down; so he started to run, and stepped on the foot of Kent’s snappin’ bull-dog, that was a settin’ thar lookin’ up the tree, thinkin’ thar must be a coon up it. The cur whirled round mad, and set his teeth into the nighest thing to him, which happened to be old Polly Alien’s ankle. But he got more than he bargained for, though, for she was so tuff that his teeth stuck thar, and she was a screamin’ and a runnin’ hum, draggin’ him arter her mor’n half the way. I never did see sich an excitin’ time. School was dismissed, and there wasn’t a lick of work done in Tuckersville the hul day. The hul talk was ‘Sam Patterson’s balloon, Sam Patterson’s balloon.’ I didn’t have to pay a picayune for anything for mor’n three weeks. Parson Jones preached a tellin’ sermon about the balloon, and thar wasn’t standin’ room in the church; they had to keep the windows open and let people standin’ on the outside stick their heads in and listen. He likened it first to youth, when it was a rollin’ around in the back yard, whar nobody seed it, impatient and ambitious to rise. Then like unto manhood, when it was up, a bustin’ and droppin’ down agin. Next he said it resembled old age, when it was in rags a floppin’ around in the tree, more for observation than use. Thar wasn’t hardly a dry eye in the hul meetin’ house. Hard-hearted old sinners cried like teethin’ babies.
“The balloon hung in the tree all summer, and every day thar’d be a crowd of people starin’ at it, like cats at a bird cage. A photographer came the hul way from town, and took lots of views of the remains; and one of Frank Leslie’s special artists come rattlin’ down thar, and sot on a stun wall for two days drawin’ sketches of it. He said it was the most spirited subject he had sot eyes on since he sketched the hoop-skirt Jeff Davis was captured in. But I’m gettin’ ruther dry. Ain’t some of you fellers agwine to call on the stimilints?”
MY CANINE.
“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.”