mornin' Jacob. Fine mornin'."

"A little warm in spots, I should imagine," returned the son. "Do
you find that a comfortable seat?" "Why-yes-it's good enough for an
old man," he answered, in a slightly husky voice, and with an uneasy
gesture of the legs; "don't make much difference in this life where
we set, if we're good-does it? This world ain't heaven, anyhow, I
s'spose."

"There I do not entirely agree with you," rejoined the young man,
composing his body upon a stump for a philosophical argument. "I
don't neither," added the old one, absently, screwing about on the
edge of the barrel and constructing a painful grimace. There was no
argument, but a silence instead. Suddenly the aged party sprang off
that barrel with exceeding great haste, as of one who has made up
his mind to do a thing and is impatient of delay. The seat of his
trousers was steaming grandly, the barrel upset, and there was a
great wash of hot water, leaving a deposit of spotted pig. In life
that pig had belonged to Mr. Scolliver the younger! Mr. Scolliver
the younger was angry, but remembering Jefferson's maxim, he rattled
off the number ten, finishing up with "You--thief!" Then
perceiving himself very angry, he began all over again and ran up to
one hundred, as a monkey scampers up a ladder. As the last syllable
shot from his lips he planted a dreadful blow between the old man's
eyes, with a shriek that sounded like--"You son of a sea-cook!"

Mr. Scolliver the elder went down like a stricken beef, and his son
often afterward explained that if he had not counted a hundred, and
so given himself time to get thoroughly mad, he did not believe he
could ever have licked the old man. Mr. Hunker's Mourner.