This treason right at the future Senator’s very front door is hard for outsiders to understand. It is very much to be feared that the _American_ has failed to measure fully up to the opportunities offered for intimate personal relations with the foremost fiddler of the age. Perhaps the _American_ never heard a whippoorwill singing in December, but that does not prove that “Bob” Taylor hasn’t. Where “Bob” Taylor is, there, also, are the whippoorwills, the mockingbirds, the catbirds, and all the sweet and soulful singers known to Dixieland. It matters not the season, nor the hour, we take it. Song birds hover ever in his wake, and music hangs upon the lightest trembling of his bow. Flowers have their hours to fade, and the sun has its time to set, but for “Bob” Taylor’s fiddle, all hours and times are the same. But even were it possible to believe that whippoorwills came not to the melodious pleadings of his bow, as a matter of cold and prosaic fact, nevertheless, by reason of the license granted all poets, this music master of the hills and dales of Tennessee would still have the right to claim their presence. Why should the _American_ be captious about a little thing like that; especially when the sentimental nature of the state’s favorite son is so inevitably interwoven with the warp and woof of the argument? A prophet may be without honor save in his own country, but a fiddler of “Bob” Taylor’s fame deserves loyalty and cordial praise from all. Let the _American_ cease from troubling, and concede that the Senator-to-be has “rings on his fingers and bells on his toes, and that he shall have music wherever he goes!” It must be remembered, at the very outset of this discussion, that the incident happened in the days of my callow youth, when all sorts of melodies and things were buzzing in my head, and life itself was one sweet song of tuneful melody; that I was in love and had a fiddle under my arm, alone in a moonlit mountain cove on my way to a dance, with a heart throbbing in happy expectancy. It was just at this excruciatingly delightful junction that the twittering occurred which constitutes the bone of this contention (if a twitter can be called a bone) and to that I deem it important to add some observations by way of explanation, refutation, and extenuation.