Thar's a melancholy settles on us all, as we
camps 'round on crates an' shoe boxes an' silently sympathizes with
Enright to see him so redooced. At last the grand old chief starts
in to talk without questions or requests.
"'If you-all don't mind,' says Enright, 'I'll let go a handful of
mem'ries touchin' my yooth. Thar's nothin' like maladies to make a
gent sentimental, onless it be gettin' shot up or cut up with
bullets or bowies; an' these yere visitations, which Peets thinks is
alkali an' I holds is the burdens of them years of mine, shore
leaves me plumb romantic.
'Which I've been thinkin' all day, between times when I'm thinkin'
of licker, of Polly Hawks; an' I'll say right yere she's my first
an' only love. She's a fine young female, is Polly--tall as a
saplin', with a arm on her like a cant-hook. Polly can lift an' hang
up a side of beef, an' is as good as two hands at a log-rollin'.
"'This yere's back in old Tennessee on the banks of the Cumberland.
It's about six years followin' on the Mexican war, an' I'm shot
up'ards into the semblances of a man. My affections for Polly has
their beginnin's in a coon-hunt into which b'ars an' dogs gets
commingled in painful profoosion.
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