“The way I’ve been havin’ fun without knowing anything about it. If you young gentlemen want to reely enjoy yourselves, you come over to my farm an’ git me to let you drive pigs. You’ll git all the walkin’ you want, an’ the way you have to watch for surprises, an’ slip about so’s not to lose ’em, would tickle you nearly to death.”
One day an artist ambulated into Kerosenelampville, and Silas asked him:
“How much’ll you charge to paint my house with me a-standin’ in the door?”
The artist said fifty dollars, and Silas told him to go ahead with the work.
In due course the painting was finished. But, alas! the careless artist clean forgot to paint my cousin on the picture.
“I like it,” said Silas; “but where’s me, lad—where’s me?”
The error he had made flashed across the artist, but he tried to pass it off with a joke. “O,” he said, “you’ve gone inside to get my fifty dollars.”
“O, have I?” said Silas; “p’r’aps I’ll be coomin’ out soon, and if I dew I’ll pay you; in t’ meantime we’ll hang it up and wait.”
Just as I had entered a barber’s shop to-day and was hanging my top-piece on a nail, a 290-pounder rushed in and said to the only other man in the place—a fellow with his coat and vest off and an apron tied around his waist: