Boys -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Tramps -- Juvenile fiction
“Very well,” says Captain Winton, “and thank you.”
They all shook hands and that ended it. Catty and I walked off, and
Catty says: “We got to act pretty quick. No tellin’ what day they’ll
have that demonstration, and we got to be ready.”
“Looks so,” says I.
“We got to see that churn.”
“You bet,” says I.
“Second floor, on the corner,” says Catty.
We went over to the livery-stable because we liked to talk to Pazzy
Bills, the bus-driver, when we didn’t have anything else special to do.
Pazzy was a mighty nice man and about the best quoit-pitcher in the
county. He said that quoit-pitching was really his business and that he
just drove the bus for exercise. Said hanging on to the lines was just
the thing that kept his arm in condition to throw horseshoes right.
Pazzy was pitching against the blacksmith when we got there, and we
watched them a spell. While the blacksmith was throwing Pazzy talked to
us.
“Glad to see you takin’ a interest into the greatest game in the world,”
says he. “There hain’t no game like quaites.” (Pazzy and ’most everybody
called it “quaites” instead of “quoits” in our town, but when I’m
writing it down I have to spell it right, don’t I? or folks would get
the idee I didn’t know nothing much about right grammar and spelling. I
do. You can tell it by the way I’ve wrote about this story.)
“Yes, sirree, Bob!” says Pazzy, “a feller that kin pitch quaites first
class is as good as anybody. There hain’t nothin’ he couldn’t do if he
was to set his hands to it. You gimme a quaite-player every time.
Whenever I vote for a President of the U-nited States I says to myself,
says I, ‘Does he look like he could pitch a horseshoe?’ If he does I
vote for him, and if he don’t _I_ don’t. There’s been elections when I
wouldn’t vote for either man ’cause they didn’t have the build for
it.... One thing I don’t take to about this here Kinderhook that folks
is so crazy about. He won’t even look at a game. No, sir. He’ll walk
right by without so much as turnin’ his head. ‘’Tain’t right,’ says I,
‘and I don’t care who hears me. Any man that don’t like to watch this
here game hain’t to be trusted.’”
“Catty and me has a set of shoes,” says I. “We’re practisin’ up, and one
of these days we’re a-goin’ to come down and challenge _you_.
“Now that’s the way to talk. Seems like boys nowadays is more int’rested
into foolish games like baseball and football and that kind of a thing
where you smack a little ball over a fish-net with a whang-dingus.
Hain’t the int’rest in quaites there was once. Glad you’re bein’ brought
up right.”
Just then one of the men that worked around the hotel came over and says
to Pazzy: “Hitch up a team right off for Mr. Kinderhook. He aims to
drive over to Litchfield. Wants to git started at once.”
“You tell Kinderhook not to bust off no buttons,” says Pazzy. “I’ll
hitch when this game’s over and not before—not for Gen’ral Jackson nor
the Siamese Twins.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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