He kept his word, though. He made me regret it. You'd hardly believe a man near fifty years old would hold a grudge against a sixteen-year-old boy hard enough to lie about him on every occasion, and poison the boy's father's mind, would you? That's the facts. He stirred the old man up by things he "really didn't like to tell, you know, but felt it his painful duty"--and so forth. Yes, sir; he made me regret it plenty. You might say he broke our home up. And so, if ever I meet that gentleman in the hereafter, above or below, him and me is going to have some kind of a scuffle--but shucks! There's no use getting excited over it at my age. The good Lord's attended to his case all right, without any help from me. In all kinds of little things mother and father were separated by miles. Take the case of old Eli Perkins, the tin-peddler, for instance. Mother used to love to buy things from Eli, to hear him bargain and squirm, trying his best to give you a wrong steer, without lying right out. "Well, now, Mis' Saunders," he'd say, "I ain't sayin' _myself_ thet thet pan is solerd tin; I'm on'y repeatin' of what I bin tolt. I du' know es it _be_ solerd tin; mebbe not. In thet case, of course, it ain't wuth nineteen cents, es I was sayin', but about, about ... well, well, now! I'll tell you what I'll do, ma'am. I'll say fourteen cents and a few of them Baldwins to take the taste out 'n my mouth--can't do no fairer than thet now, kin I? Yassam--well, nuthin' more _to_-day? Thankee, ma'am." And Eli'd drive off, leaving mother and me highly entertained. But father'd scowl when his eye fell on Eli. It seems that the poor old cuss was a child of the devil, because he would take Chief Okochohoggammee's Celebrated Snaggerroot Indian Bitters for some trouble Eli felt drawing toward him and tried to meet in time. When Eli got an overdose of the chief's medicine he had one song. Then you heard him warble: "Retur-n-n-n-i-n' from mar-r-r-ket, Thebutterneggsallsold, And--will you be so kind, young man, And tie 'em up for _ME_? Yaas I will, yaas I will, w'en we git UPon the hill. And we joggled erlong tergether singin' TOORAL-I-YOODLE-I-AAAAAAAAAAAAY!!" Well, sir, to hear it, and to see Eli, with his head bent back near to break off, his old billy-goat whisker wagging to the tune, was to obtain a pleasant memory. The way that "TOORAL-I-YOODLE-I-AY" come out used to start old Dandy Jim, the horse, on a dead run. Another offspring of the same split-hoof parent was Bobby Scott, the one-legged sailorman that used to whittle boats for us boys when he was sober, and go home from the tavern Saturday nights at the queerest gait you ever saw, playing his accordion and scattering pennies to the kids. I always liked any kind of music; pennies didn't come my way so often--how were you going to make me believe Old Bob was a wicked sinner? I didn't, nor that Eli was neither. I thought a heap of both of 'em.