"Now, look ye, you gingerbread-bodied Yankee--I'd like to know what you
mean about taking whip and hammer to the clock. If you mean to say that
I ever did such a thing, I'll lick you now, by the eternal scratch!"

"Order, order, Mr. Jenkins--order! The chair must be respected. You must
come to order, Mr. Jenkins--" was the vociferous and urgent cry of the
chairman, repeated by half a dozen voices; the pedler, in the meanwhile,
half doubting the efficacy of the call, retreating with no little terror
behind the chair of the dignified personage who presided.

"Well, you needn't make such a howling about it," said Jenkins,
wrathfully, and looking around him with the sullen ferocity of a chafed
bear. "I know jist as well how to keep order, I reckon, as any on you;
but I don't see how it will be out of order to lick a Yankee, or who can
hinder me, if I choose it."

"Well, don't look at me, Dick Jenkins, with such a look, or I'll have a
finger in that pie, old fellow. I'm no Yankee to be frightened by sich a
lank-sided fellow as you; and, by dogs, if nobody else can keep you in
order, I'm jist the man to try if I can't. So don't put on any shines,
old boy, or I'll darken your peepers, if I don't come very nigh plucking
them out altogether."

So spake another of the company, who, having been much delectified with
the trial, had been particularly solicitous in his cries for order.
Jenkins was not indisposed to the affray, and made an angry retort,
which provoked another still more angry; but other parties interfering,
the new difficulty was made to give place to that already in hand. The
imputation upon Jenkins, that his ignorance of the claims of the clock