“Gawd be praised!” roared Tobe, inside the house.
“Amen!” responded Jack, outside.
“An' Tobe Cullum,” announced Joe Trimble at Bishop's the next day, “have ordered up the fines' set o' shiny in Waco fer Sissy.”
“It beats me,” said Newt Pinson; “but I allers did say that the women o' Jim-Ned, ez wives, air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!”
THE COURTSHIP OF COLONEL BILL
BY J. J. EAKINS
It was early morning in the Bluegrass. The triumphant sun was driving the white mist before it from wood and rolling meadow-land, rousing the drowsy cattle from their tranquil dreams and quickening into fuller life all the inhabitants of that favored region, from the warlike woodpecker with his head of flame high up in the naked tree-top to the timid ground-squirrel flitting along the graystone fences. It glorified with splendid impartiality the apple blossoms in the orchards and the vagabond blackberry bushes blooming by the roadside; and then, with many a mile of smiling pastures in its victorious wake, it burst over the low rampart of stable roofs encircling the old Lexington race-course, and, after a hasty glimpse at the horses speeding around the track and the black boys singing and slouching from stall to stall with buckets of water on their heads, it rushed impetuously into an old-fashioned, deep-waisted family barouche beside one of the stables, and shone full upon a slender, girlish figure within. It wasted no time upon a purple-faced old gentleman beside her, nor upon two young gentlemen on the seat opposite, but rested with bold and ardent admiration upon the young girl's face, touching her cheeks with a color as delicate as the apple blossoms in the orchards, and weaving into her rich brown hair the red gold of its own beams.
The picture was so dazzling and altogether so unprecedented that Colonel Bill Jarvis, the young owner of the stable, who had come swinging around the corner, whistling a lively tune, his hat thrown back on his head, and who had almost run plump into the carriage, stopped abruptly and stood staring. He was roused to a realizing sense of his position by Major Cicero Johnson, editor of the Lexington Chronicle and president of the association, who was standing beside the barouche, saying, with that courtliness of manner and amplitude of rhetoric which made him a fixture in the legislative halls at Frankfort: “Colonel Bill, I want to present you to General Thomas Anderson Braxton, the hero of two wars, of whom as a Kentuckian you must be proud, and his sons Matt and Jack, and his daughter, Miss Sue, the Flower of the Blue-grass. Ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, with an oratorical wave of his hand towards the Colonel, who had bowed gravely to each person in turn to whom he was introduced, “this is my friend Colonel Bill Jarvis, the finest horseman and the most gallant young turfman between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico.”
While the Major was speaking, Colonel Bill's eyes wandered from the two young gentlemen on the front seat to the purple-faced old General on the rear seat, and then rested on Miss Braxton. Her eyes met his, and she smiled. It was such a pleasant, gracious, encouraging smile, and there was so much kindliness in the depths of the soft brown eyes, that the Colonel was reassured at once.