groaned, like. That day he got full uv likker 'nd he kep' full uv likker
for a week; but when he come round all right he wrote a pome for the
paper, 'nd the name uv the pome wuz "Mary," but whether Mary wuz his
sister or his wife or an old sweetheart uv his'n I never knew. But it
looked from the pome like she wuz dead 'nd that he loved her.

Bill wuz the best lokil the paper ever had. He didn't hustle around much,
but he had a kind er pleasin' way uv dishin' things up. He c'u'd be mighty
comical when he sot out to be, but his best holt was serious pieces.
Nobody could beat Bill writing obituaries. When old Mose Holbrook wuz
dyin' the minister sez to him: "Mr. Holbrook, you seem to be sorry that
you're passin' away to a better land?"

"Wall, no; not exactly _that_," sez Mose, "but to be frank with you,
I _hev_ jest one regret in connection with this affair."

"What's that?" asked the minister.

"I can't help feelin' sorry," sez Mose, "that I ain't goin' to hev the
pleasure uv readin' what Bill Newton sez about me in the paper. I know
it'll be sumthin' uncommon fine; I loant him two dollars a year ago last
fall."

The Higginses lost a darned good friend when Bill died. Bill wrote a pome
'bout their old dog Towze when he wuz run over by Watkins's hay-wagon
seven years ago. I'll bet that pome is in every scrap-book in the county.
You couldn't read that pome without cryin',--why, that pome w'u'd hev
brought a dew out on the desert uv Sary. Old Tim Hubbard, the meanest man
in the State, borrered a paper to read the pome, and he wuz so 'fected by
it that he never borrered anuther paper as long as he lived. I don't