“'My esteemed friend and feller-country-man,' says Billy, speakin' plenty slow and plenty polite, 'ef any gentleman present is inclined to make a pussonal matter of it, I'll undertake to endeavour to prove up my right to that there title right here and now. But ef not, I wish to state fur the benefit of all concerned that frum this minute I ain't figgerin' on wearin' the nickname any longer. Frum where I set it looks to me like this is a mighty fitten and appropriate time to go out of the fightin' business and resume the placid and pleasant ways of peace. Frum now on, to friends ez well ez to strangers, I'm goin' to be jest plain William Pitman Priest, Esquire, attorney and counsellor-at-law. I ast you all to kindly bear it in mind. And furthermore speakin' solely and exclusively fur the said William Pitman Priest, I will state it is my intention of gittin' acrost this here river in time to eat my supper on the soil of my own country. Ef anybody here feels like goin' along with me I'll be glad of his company. Ef not, I'll bid all you good comrades an affectionate farewell and jest jog along over all by my lonesome self.' “But, of course, when he said that last he was jest funnin'--talkin' to hear hisself talk. He knowed good and well we would all go with him. And we did. And ez fur ez I know none of us ever had cause to regret takin' the step. “By hurryin', we did git back home before hog-killin' time. And then after a spell, when we'd had our disabilities removed, some of us like Billy Priest started runnin' fur office and bein' elected with reasonable regularity and some of us, like me, went into business. We lived through bayonet rule and reconstruction and carpet-baggery, and we lived to see all them evils die out and a better feelin' and a better understandin' come in. We've been livin' ever since, sech of us ez are still survivin'. I've done consider'ble livin' myself. I've lived to see North and South united. I've even lived to see my own daughter married to the son of a Northern soldier, with the full consent of the families on both sides. And so that's how it happens I've got a grandson that's part Yankee and part Confederate in his breedin'. I reckin there ain't nobody that's ez plum' foolish ez I am about that there little, curly-headed sassy tike, without it's his grandfather on the other side, old Major Ashcroft. We differ radically on politics, the Major bein' a besotted and hopeless black Republikin; and try ez I will I ain't never been able to cure him of a delusion of his'n that the Ninth Michigan could a-helt its own ag'inst King's Hell Hounds ef ever they'd met up on the field of battle; but in other respects he's a fairly intelligent man; and he certainly does coincide with me that betwixt us we've got the smartest four-year-old youngster fur a grandchild that ever was born. There's hope fur a nation that kin produce sech children ez that one, ef I do say it myself.” He stood up and shook himself.