I think he was afraid, but it is nice for to be brave like Billy, which says if there wasnt any soldiers the Millennium would be upon to us and we would all have to flee to the mountains! My sisters young man says that once there was a cat, and there was a dog, and there was a lamb, and there was a ox. The dog it said to the ox: “Thats a mighty long tail you got there, mister, with a nice duster to the end of it, but you cant waggle it when you meet your master carryin a beef steak.” Then the cat it said to the ox, too: “No, indeed, and you cant blow it up and spit fire wen you meet a other ox.” The lamb it said: “And you aint able for to twinkle it when you think of some thing funny.” The ox he thought awhile and then he said: “I played hookey when I was a little boy so much that I didn’t learn them vain acomplishments, thats a fact, but I have got a tolerbly fair business education, and I guess maybe you fellers would have to come to me for to help you out if you had to fill a order for ox tail soup.” Mary, thats the house maid, she has wrote some poetry about cats, which my mother says is mighty fine. Here it is: The cat it has 4 feet, And it has got a tail, And purs when you stroke it the right way, But beware its toe nail! There is nothing beautifuller than cats When they are little kits, But some day they grow up to be big toms And hunches up their backs and spits. Cats catches mice, which if they wasn’t caught Would be drownded in the honey, And the preserves, and the jams, and the jellies, And maybe poison Billy and Johnny. I never have saw such rot, but Uncle Ned he says: “I beg for to remind you, fair youth, that you have yet to peruse the work of Ella Wheeler Wilcox.” If I was a poet I would not write about spitcats, no, indeed, it would be all about the eagle, which is the king of beasts and fixes its eye on to the sun, and soars aloof into the blue imperial, and defies the lion and her welps! Once there was a eagle which was a show, and a man which was to the show dropped a twenty dollar gold piece and it rolled into the eagles cage. The eagle it looked at it a while, and called his wife and said, the eag did: “That feller threw his poker check in here, and I guess he thought I would swaller it cause it has a chicken on one side, but Ide blush for to have such a nasty lookin rooster cut out of my craw.” My sisters young man he says when he was a boy and went to school him and a other boy had a readin lesson about animals. The teacher, which was near sighted, he had lost his spettacles and couldn’t tell one word from a other, and they knew it. So when they stood up for to read, my sisters young man he begun and said: “The cat is the loftiest centipede which sweeps the horizon and scowers the plain.” The teacher he said: “What’s that, whats that?”