"Yes! and flummuck me if ever I want to be so fixed again; for there I sat with my feet drawn straight under my knees, heads up, and hands laid close along my legs, like a new recruit on drill, or a horse in the stocks; and, twist me, if I didn't feel as if I was about to be nicked. The whole company stared at me as if I had come without an invite; and I swear I thought my arms had grown a foot longer, for I couldn't get my hands in no sort of a comfortable fix--first I tried them on my lap; there they looked like goin to prayers, or as if I was tied in that way; then I slung 'em down by my side, and they looked like two weights to a clock; and then I wanted to cross my legs, and I tried that, but my leg stuck out like a pump handle; then my head stuck up through a glazed shirt-collar, like a pig in a yoke; then I wanted to spit, but the floor looked so fine, that I would as soon have thought of spittin on the window; and then to fix me out and out, they asked us all to sit down to dinner! Well, things went on smooth enough for a while, till we had got through one whet at it. Then a blasted imp of a nigger come to me first with a waiter of little bowls full of something, and a parcel of towels slung over his arm; so I clapped one of the bowls to my head, and drank it down at a swallow. Now, stranger, what do you think was in it?" "Punch, I suppose," said Lamar, laughing; "or perhaps apple toddy." "So I thought, and so would anybody, as dry as I was, and that wanted something to wash down the fainty stuffs I had been layin in; but no! it was warm water! Yes! you may laugh! but it was clean warm water. The others dipped their fingers into the bowls, and wiped them on the towels as well as they could for gigglin; but it was all the fault of that pampered nigger, in bringin it to me first. As soon as I catched his eye, I gin him a wink, as much as to let him know that if ever I caught him on my trail, I would wipe him down with a hickory towel." "But I suppose you enjoyed yourself highly before it was all over?" said Chevillere. "When it was all over, I was glad enough; I jumped and capered like a school-boy at the first of the holydays." "Have you never been invited out since?" asked Lamar. "O yes, often," said Damon; "but you don't catch a weasel asleep again. I like to give a joke, and take a joke; but then the joke was all on one side. If I can take a hand in the laugh, I don't care whether a person laughs _at_ me, or _with_ me." "But what say you?" said Chevillere; "shall we send your horse to the country with ours?" "Why! as you gentlemen seem to speak me so fair, and to know the world so well, I don't care if I do send old Pete out to board awhile. I shouldn't be surprised though if he should give me up for lost, and fret himself to death. But I must see the man that goes to the country with them; 'cause Pete couldn't bear shabby talk; he's what I call a leetle particular in his company for a dumb brute."