“So we stood Brown up agin a tree and poured hot ashes down his back till
he begun to fit his cloze pretty quick, and then we laid him down in the
tent and covered him up with everything we had in our humble cot.
Everything worked well till he begun to perspirate, and then there was
music, and don't you forget it. That kind of soaked the ashes, don't you
see, and made a lye that would take the peelin' off a telegraph pole.
“Charcoal Brown jest simply riz up and uttered a shrill whoop that jarred
the geology of Colorado, and made my blood run cold. The goose flesh riz
on old Joe Connoy till you could hang your hat on him anywhere. It was
awful.
“Brown stood up on his feet, and threw things, and cussed us till we felt
ashamed of ourselves. I've seen sickness a good deal in my time, but--I
give it to you straight--I never seen an invalid stand up in the
loneliness of the night, far from home and friends, with the concentrated
lye oozin' out of the cracks of his boots, and reproach people the way
Charcoal Brown did us.
“He got over it, of course, before Christmas, but he was a different man
after that. I've been out campin' with him a good many times sence, but he
never complained of feelin' indisposed. He seemed to be timid about
tellin' us even if he was under the weather, and old Joe Connoy said mebbe
Brown was afraid we would prescribe fur him or sumthin'.”
Nero.
Nero, who was a Roman Emperor from 54 to 68 A.D., was said to have been
one of the most disagreeable monarchs to meet that Rome ever had. He was a
nephew of Culigula, the Emperor, on his mother's side, and a son of
Dominitius Ahenobarbust, of St. Lawrence county. The above was really
Nero's name, but in the year 50, A.D., his mother married Claudius and
her son adopted the name of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. This
name he was in the habit of wearing during the cold weather, buttoned up
in front. During the hot weather, Nero was all the name he wore. In 53,
Nero married Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and went right to
housekeeping. Nero and Octavia did not get along first-rate. Nero soon
wearied of his young wife and finally transferred her to the New
Jerusalem.
In 54, Nero's mother, by concealing the rightful heir to the throne for
several weeks and doctoring the returns, succeeded in getting the steady
job of Emperor for Nero at a good salary.
His reign was quite stormy and several long, bloody wars were carried on
during that period. He was a good vicarious fighter and could successfully
hold a man's coat all day, while the man went to the front to get killed.
He loved to go out riding over the battle fields, as soon as it was safe,
in his gorgeously bedizened band chariot and he didn't care if the wheels
rolled in gore up to the hub, providing it was some other man's gore. It
gave him great pleasure to drive about over the field of carnage and gloat
over the dead. Nero was not a great success as an Emperor, but as a
gloater he has no rival in history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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