Kisses at the blonde will throw, and she’ll return the same.
THE CHAMPION MEAN MAN.
Yesterday I came across a singular looking individual dressed in a greasy, dingy suit. He was sitting on a log before his door engaged in repairing a shovel-handle.
“Say, stranger,” I said, addressing him, “can you inform me where Deacon Shellbark lives?”
The farmer looked up, pushed his slouched hat back on his head, and after surveying me some time in silence, drawled out:—
“Be you any relation of his’n?”
“No,” I replied, a little surprised at his manner of answering; “I haven’t a relative in the State.”
“By thunder! I congratulate you upon your good fortune,” he ejaculated, “particularly because there’s no tie of consanguinity existin’ atwixt you and old Deacon Shellbark. He’s expectin’ a son home, and I thought you mout be him.
“Wal,” he continued, pointing with a huge jack-knife that he held in his hand, “you see that house to the left of them scrub oaks, don’t you? that ar buildin’ with the leetle coopalow on’t? Wal, thar’s whar old Deacon Shellbark lives; the meanest man in this yer county, and that’s sayin’ considerable, too! cause we’ve got some vicey-fisted customers round these yer parts, men who scrape the puddin’ pot mighty clean before the dog gits a chance to canvass it, now I can tell ye. But I feel safe in stickin’ in old Shellbark at the head, and I ain’t agwine to haul him down nuther. I don’t believe in talkin’ much about one’s neighbors, but I ginnerally tell strangers what sort of a man he is, cause if they go to tradin’ with him and aren’t on thar guard, he’ll skin ’em quicker than a whirlpool sucks in a dead fish.”
“You know the Deacon, then?” I remarked, while the hope I had entertained of getting his name on my subscription list began to take to itself wings.