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of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in

town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at.

A body would a thought he was Adam, he was just all mud. Whenever

his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the govment. This

time he says: ssssssssss

"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like.

Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him -- a

man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and

ail the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised

at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for Um and give

him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment!

That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and

helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law does.

The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and upards, and jams him

into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes

that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't get

his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to

just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told 'em so; I told old

Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said.

Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come anear

it agin. Them's the very words. I says, look at my hat -- if you call

it a hat -- but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below

my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head

was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I -- such a

hat for me to wear -- one of the wealthiest men in this town, if I could git

my rights. ssssssssss

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here.

There was a free nigger there, from Ohio; a mulatter, most as white as

a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the

shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes

as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed

cane -- the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you

think? they said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds

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