His language impressed the match-maker and for the preliminary go he was entered against a dependable colored scrapper. The stranger made a deplorable showing. For two rounds his opponent hammered him all over the ring. Early in the third round the beaten darky decided he had enough. He took an easy poke on the jaw and flattened out on the canvas to be counted out. The referee was halfway through with his tally when disgust moved him to interpolate a speech: “Say, nigger,” he growled out of the corner of his mouth, “you ain’t hurt. Get up from there! Ain’t you goin’ to fight any more?” Without stirring from his comfortable recumbent position the whirlwind made answer: “Oh, yassuh, I’m gwine fight some mo’—_but not to-night!_” § 273 An Attack on the Affiliated Talent Two professional confidence-men made the acquaintance of a wealthy sportsman. He admired their sprightliness while privately deploring their vocation. When the acquaintance had ripened into friendship he invited them to shoot in his private preserve. Before daylight they were paddled out in a skiff and put in a blind which, the night before, had been stocked with wooden decoys. There the guide left them, for the time being. As the dawn began to break, one of the pair suddenly was aware of the wooden birds bobbing about in front of him. The light was poor and he was green at the duck-shooting game. He arose and fired both barrels of his gun into the flock. His partner straightened up, took one look, and cried out in distress: “My God! You’re shootin’ the boosters!” § 274 The Deceased Had Been Forehanded A few months after the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect a Texan passed from this life. While the funeral services were in progress at the late home of the deceased, two of the men mourners stood on the front porch of the house lamenting the passing of their friend and praising his virtues. Said one of them: “There wasn’t no finer feller anywhere than what Bill was, but the main trouble with him was he wasn’t forehanded. He had a wife and a whole passel of children and he should a-been more saving than what he was. He might a-knowed he couldn’t live on forever. But no, he lived up to everything he made. And here now, right in the very prime of life, with a family on his hands, he gets sick and dies without leaving no estate as I knows of.” “The hell he didn’t leave no estate!” exclaimed the other. “He left mighty nigh a gallon!” § 275 How the Reform Worked When the Union troops under Grant, early in the Civil War, took possession of West Kentucky, some difficulty was encountered in controlling the populace, for that end of the state was a hot-bed of Southern sentiment. General Grant issued proclamations stating that no citizen would be molested unless he undertook to give aid and comfort to the enemy.