"'Which it's shorely a set-back America has no poets,' says he.

"'It's evident,' I says, 'that you never hears of Mollie Hines.'

"'No, never once,' he replies; 'is this yere Miss Hines a poet?'

"Is Mollie Hines a poet!' I repeats, for my scorn at the mere idee
kind o' stiffens its knees an' takes to buckin' some. 'Mollie Hines
could make that Locksley Hall gent you was readin' from, or even the
party who writes Watt's Hymns, go to the diskyard.' An' then I
repeats some forty of them stanzas, whereof that one I jest now
recites is a speciment.

"What does this pulpit gent say? He see I has him cinched, an' he's
plumb mute. He confines himse'f to turnin' up his nose in disgust
like Bill Storey does when his father-in-law horsewhips him."

Following this, the Old Cattleman and I wrapped ourselves in
thoughtful smoke, for the space of five minutes, as ones who
pondered the genius of "The Nightingale of Big Bone Lick"--Mollie
Hines on the banks of the Possom Trot. At last my friend broke forth
with a question.

"Whoever is them far-off folks you-all was tellin' me is related to
Injuns?"

"The Japanese." I replied. "Undoubtedly the Indians and the Japanese
are of the same stock."