“How comes it that you never wrung in that part of the story about the knot before?” “’Cause, I’d done got the licker, and I was satisfied; you thought you’d gin me some mighty big licks, and you was satisfied; and it would have been mean in me to crow over you then: you was out of licker, tobacco, and had your fist all skinned and beat as soft as a bar’s foot! Oh no, Jim, I’m reasonable, _I is_.” “Well, _go along_; if I don’t set you to gnawin’ somethin’ harder than that knot afore long, then my name ain’t nothin’ to me, and I don’t car for nobody, that’s all.” “All sot,” says Chunkey, “let’s licker. You wanted to know what ‘_fallin off a log_’ meant, and I thought I’d show you; but, my honey, I’ll jist let you know if you’d a hit _me_ any of them licks what you struck ‘right and left’ into that knot, I’d a gin you a touch of panter fistcuffs—a sort of cross of the scratch on the bite—and a powerful strong game it is, in a close fight. Come, gents, let’s licker, and then I can beat any man that wars har, for a mighty nice chunk of a poney, at any game of short cards: Oh, the waggoner was a mighty man, a mighty man was he: He’d pop his whip, and stretch his chains, and holler ‘wo, gee!’” XI. A YANKEE CARD-TABLE.[10] When I was about leaving New Orleans, standing upon the Levee, waiting for my luggage, I was thus addressed by a long, lean, down-Easter: “Say yeou, which of these things slips up fust?” “What?” said I. “Which of these things slips up fust?” “Do you mean which steam-boat goes up the river first?” “Yes, I’ll be darned if I don’t.” “That one,” said I pointing to the nearest. “I’m in an awful hurry to git eout of this. It is so thundering hot, and I smell the yeller fever all reound.”