"The convention had voted the first day not to recognize no proxies for absentees, and so, having one vote the advantage, we was beginning to feel like winners, when just then Breck Calloway from McCorkin County, he up and taken the cramps the worst way. For a spell it shore looked like he was going to be cholera-morbussed. Breck started in for luxuries in the line of vittles soon as he hit town, and between votes he kept filling hisself up on fried catfeesh and red bananas and pickled pigs' feet and gum drops and cove eyesters and cocoanut out of the shell and ice cream and sardines--greasy minners, Breck called 'em--and aig-kisses and a whole lot of them kind of knick-knacks. "That mout not a-bothered him so much if he hadn't switched from straight licker and taken on consid'able many drinks of this here new-fangled stuff called creamy de mint--green stuff like what you see in a big bottle in a drug store winder with a light behind it. By the middle of the third day Breck was trying to walk on his hands. He had a figger like one of them Mystic Mazes. 'Course, all kinked up that way, he warn't fitten for a deligate, and Colonel Bud Crittenden had to ship him home. "I heard tell afterwards that going back on the steam cars the conductor told Breck he didn't care if he was a contortionist, he couldn't practise none of his didoes on that there train. "So there we was, each side shy one vote and still tied--52 and 52. And at dinner time the convention taken a recess until ha'f past three in the evening with the understanding that we'd vote again at foah o'clock. "Jest as soon as our fellers had got a drink or two and a snack to eat, Colonel Bud Crittenden, he called a caucus, him being not only manager of Major Zach Taylor Simms' campaign but likewise chairman of the district committee. Colonel Bud rapped for order and made a speech. He said the paramountest issue was how to nominate Major Simms on that there next ballot. Said they'd done trying buying off members of the opposition and other regular methods without no success whatsomever. Said the Chair would now be glad to hear suggestions from any gen'elman present. "So Morg Holladay he got up and moved the Chair to appoint a committee of one or more to shoot up some deligate or, if desired, deligates, in the other crowd. But the Colonel said no. We wuz in a strange town, fur removed from the time-honored institutions of home, and the police mout be hosstile. Customs differed in different towns. Whil'st shooting up of a man for purely political purposes mout be accepted as necessary and proper in one place; then agin it mout lead to trouble, sich as lawsuits, in another. And so on.