Romance of California Life by John Habberton
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page 10 of 561 (01%)
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occurred, the boys, by agreement, stopped work two hours earlier than
usual, for the stage usually reached Bottle Flat about two hours before sundown, and the one of that day was to bring the hated teacher. The boys had wellnigh given up the idea of further resistance, yet curiosity has a small place even in manly bosoms, and they could at least _look_ hatred at the detested pedagogue. So about four o'clock they gathered at The Nugget so suddenly, that several fathers; who were calmly drinking inside, had barely time to escape through the back windows. The boys drank several times before composing themselves into their accustomed seats and leaning-places; but it was afterward asserted and Southpaw--the one-armed bar-keeper--cited as evidence, that none of them took sugar in their liquor. They subjected their sorrow to homeopathic treatment by drinking only the most raw and rasping fluids that the bar afforded. The preliminary drinking over, they moodily whittled, chewed, and expectorated; a stranger would have imagined them a batch of miserable criminals awaiting transportation. The silence was finally broken by a decided-looking red-haired man, who had been neatly beveling the door-post with his knife, and who spoke as if his words only by great difficulty escaped being bitten in two. "We ken burn down the schoolhouse right before his face and eyes, and then mebbe the State Board'll git our idees about eddycation." "Twon't be no use, Mose," said Judge Barber, whose legal title was honorary, and conferred because he had spent some time in a penitentiary in the East. "Them State Board fellers is wrong, but they've got grit, |
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