“Why, lord bless your dear soul, I ain’t mad at you, Mary!” ses I, “what makes you think I could git mad at you?”
“ ’Cause I didn’t want you to hurt poor little Tip—poor little feller, he didn’t know no better.”
“But, Mary, I wasn’t mad at you at all,” ses I, “what makes you think so?”
“ ’Cause you never said don’t so cross to me before—you said it jest as cross as you could.”
“But I wasn’t mad, honey—it was reachin’ over so fur made me speak sort o’ quick,” ses I, “I never was mad at you in my life.”
But in spite of all I could say or do I couldn’t git her in a good humour the whole evenin’, jest ’cause I said “don’t” to her when she kep’ puttin’ her foot in my way. It’s all over now, but I dasn’t look sideways at Tip for fear he’ll kick up another fuss. It’s monstrous curious. I know Mary loves me, and ther ain’t a sweeter tempered nor a better gall in Georgia, but they all have such curious ways sometimes. Old Miss Stallins say it’s always so at first, but she ses Mary’ll git over all them little childish notions one of these days. Ther’s one thing certain, I wish ther was no little dogs in our family.
I never was so supprised in my life as when I heard ’bout them oudacious bank robbers. I think they better alter the law about jurys, so that when they want to try criminal cases hereafter, they can jest send to the Penitentiary and git twelve fellers at once to come and be jurymen. They’d answer the purpose jest as well, and then honest men wouldn’t be put to no trouble to go to court jest to be objected to by the lawyers on account of ther good charaters. Besides it’s a insult to a decent man to be put on a jury now, in a criminal case.
Ther was a trial in our county not long ago of a feller what had killed a man and robbed him of a heap of money. Ther was lots of lawyers here in his favour, and when they come to pick out the jury ther was hardly twelve men in the county that the lawyers thought mean enough to set on the case. They was two days a gittin’ a jury, and every time they called up a decent lookin’ man, the prisoner’s lawyers would look at him and say, “give him the book,” and if he sed he hadn’t formed and expressed no opinion as to the gilt of the prisoner, (which most every man that cared anything about law or justice had done,) they’d look at him close, and then whisper to one another, and if they hadn’t never heard of his robin’ anybody’s hen-roost or stealin’ anything, they’d say, “object.”
Mose Sanders was called up, and Mose ain’t a very good-lookin’ feller, though he’s a honest man as ever lived. They looked at Mose awhile, and he felt sort o’ bashful I s’pose, and looked sort o’ mean, and they said “content.” Well, the case was tryed, and it was such a perfect open and shut bisness that they couldn’t help bringin’ the feller in guilty in spite of the lawyers. But ther ain’t a man in the county that is got any confidence in Mose Sanders after that—his character is completely ruined, cause everybody thinks the lawyers wouldn’t tuck him on that jury if they didn’t know he was a rascal. For my own part I would jest as leav be s’picioned of stealin’ a sheep, as to be put upon a criminal jury by the lawyers now-a-days. No more from
Your frend, ’til deth,