The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulders,—this way,—at Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well, I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long time, and at last he says, “I do wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off for; I wonder if there an’t something the matter with him, he ’pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and lifted him up, and says, “Why, blame my cats, if he don’t weigh five pound!” and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man. He set the frog down, and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him.
UNCLE DAN’L’S APPARITION AND PRAYER.
(FROM “THE GILDED AGE” OF CLEMENS AND WARNER.)
DEEP coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the monster like a torchlight procession.
“What is it? Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan’l!”
With deep solemnity the answer came:
“It’s de Almighty! Git down on yo’ knees!”