“Well, I don’t know, exactly; but he is a middle-aged man and always dresses in black.”
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., tells a story of his father:
“Father tells many stories. Sometimes he tells a new one. Not long ago he related one to me that concerned a man who had imbibed rather too freely. The man, in this condition, fell into a watering trough. To the officer who came to help him out as he wallowed in the water, he said:
“‘Offzer, I ken save self. You save women an’ shildern.’”
“On Sunday, September 20, the wife of —— of a daughter. Others please copy.”
Bret Harte was so frequently complimented as the author of “Little Breeches” that he was almost as sorry it was ever written as was Colonel John Hay, who preferred his fame to rest on more ambitious works. A gushing lady who prided herself upon her literary tastes, said to him once: “My dear Mr. Harte, I am so delighted to meet you. I have read everything you ever wrote, but of all your dialect verse there is none that compares to your ‘Little Breeches.’”