It warn't of no use a speaking to him, there he stood a strutting over back with a glass in his hand and a singing out, "Our noble guest, Lord Morpeth," like all possessed. Every critter at the table, excepting Lord Morpeth and I, jumped up with glasses in our hands, and begun to drink like a patch of seed onions after a six weeks' dry spell; but Lord Morpeth and I sot still and looked as if we didn't know what possessed the critters; but the minit they sot down up he jumped like a house a fire, and the way he cracked jokes and said smart things, made the fire fly from every body's eyes round the table. I swanny, if he didn't take me a'most off the handle with his consarned sweet voice and harnsome manners. It raly was eenamost as good as a play, to hear him reel out the common sense and soft sodder about this land of liberty and old England. When he sot down, it was as much as I could du to keep from going right up and giving him a hug, if he was a lord. Arter this we mixed in the talk altogether, like lemon, and sugar, and brandy in a punch bowl, as sociable as so many chickens in a coop, till by-am-by, Jase he begun to swell up and talk to Lord Morpeth about the Slicks, and the crouchants, and lions, that belonged to the family coat of arms as he called it; he gin us all to understand that the Slick's warn't a family to be sneezed at by any of the English Lords, and gin out some purty broad hints about a barron-night, and a lord, that gin a start to the name ever so long back in England; then the consarned shote branched out into a sarmon about ancient birth, and pure blood, a running from one generation to another, without being siled by anything low since the Slick's cum to this country, jest arter the Pilgrims, and a hull lot of the darndest stuff that ever a transmogrified hand-cartman thought on. I'd topped off my cider with two or three glasses of hock, the feller called it, and it made me feel dreadful smart, and I felt jest like tackling Jase in his own camp.