With a perfectly serious face the darkey declaimed:
"Christopher Columbus Amerigo Vespucci
George Washington Abraham Lincoln Ulysses
Grant Garibaldi Thomas Edison Guglielmo Marconi
Butts."
"For goodness sake! Will you listen to that!" gasped Mark, while Jack went off into a roar of laughter.
"Don't—don't it make your jaw ache to say it, Wash?" cried the older lad when he could speak.
"Not a-tall! not a-tall!" rejoined the darkey, shaking his woolly head.
"I has practised all ma life speakin' de berry longest words in de
English language—"
"And mispronouncing them," giggled Jack.
"Mebbe, Massa Jack, mebbe!" agreed Washington, briskly. "But de copy book say dat it is better to have tried an' failed dan nebber to have tried at all."
"And did you ever try calling the rooster back, when he starts to play truant, with all that mouthful of words?" queried the amused Mark.
"Yes, indeedy," said Washington, seriously.
"Don't he mind, then?"