To 'llustrate
this: One day my father, who's been tryin' out a two-year-old on our
little old quarter-mile track, starts for The Hill, takin' me an' a
nigger jockey, an' a-leadin' of the said two-year-old racer along.
Once we arrives at my grandfather's, my father leaves us all
standin' in the yard and reepairs into the house. The next minute
him an' my grandfather comes out. They don't say nothin', but my
grandfather goes all over the two-year-old with eyes an' hand for
mighty likely ten minutes. At last he straightens up an' turns on my
father with a face loaded to the muzzle with rage.
"'"Willyum Greene Sterett," he says, conferrin' on my parent his
full name, the same bein' a heap ominous; "Willyum Greene Sterett,
you've brought that thing to The Hill to beat my Golddust."
"'"Yes," says my father, mighty steady, "an' I'll go right out on
your track now, father, an' let that black boy ride him an' I'll
gamble you all a thousand dollars that that two-year-old beats
Golddust."
"'" Willyum Greene Sterett," says my grandfather, lookin' at my
father an' beginnin' to bile, "I've put up with a heap from you. You
was owdacious as a child, worthless as a yooth, an' a spend-thrift
as a young man grown; an' a score of times I've paid your debts as
was my dooty as the head of the House of Sterett.
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