"Rain come wet me, sun come dry me.
Take keer, white man, don't come nigh me." "Stop that double-
shufflin' an' wing dancin'," remonstrated the old gentleman
severely, as he took the hat and fixed it on his head. "I don't want
no frivolities an' merry-makin's 'round me. Which you're always
jumpin' an' dancin' like one of these yere snapjack bugs. I ain't
aimin' at pompousness none, but thar's a sobriety goes with them
years of mine which I proposes to maintain if I has to do it with a
blacksnake whip. So you-all boy Tom, you look out a whole lot! I'm
goin' to break you of them hurdy-gurdy tendencies, if I has to make
you wear hobbles an' frale the duds off your back besides."

Tom smiled toothfully, yet in confident fashion, as one who knows
his master and is not afraid.

"So you never hears of Grief Mudlow?" he continued, as we strolled
abroad on our walk. "I reckons mebby you has, for they shore puts
Grief into a book once, commemoratin' of his laziness. How lazy is
he? Well, son, he could beat Mexicans an' let 'em deal. He's raised
away off cast, over among the knobs of old Knox County, Grief is,
an' he's that lazy he has to leave it on account of the hills.

"'She's too noomerous in them steeps an' deecliv'ties,' says Grief.
'What I needs is a landscape where the prevailin' feacher is the
hor'zontal. I was shorely born with a yearnin' for the level
ground.' An' so Grief moves his camp down on the river bottoms,
where thar ain't no hills.

"He's that mis'rable idle an' shiftless, this yere Grief is, that
once he starts huntin' an' then decides he won't. Grief lays down by