“I’ve heard folks say as how bars cannot think like other human critters, and that they does all the sly tricks what they does, from instink. Golly! what a lie! You tell me one of ’em don’t know when you’ve got a gun, and when you ain’t? Just wait a minit, an’ my privit ’pinion is, when you’ve hearn me thro’ you’ll talk t’other side of your mouth. “You see, one day, long time ago, ’fore britches come in fashion, I made a ’pointment with Ike Hamberlin the steam doctor, to go out next Sunday to seek whom we couldn’t kill, a bar, for you know bacon was skace, and so was money, and them fellers down in Mechanicsburg wouldn’t sell on tick, so we had to ’pend on the varmints for a livin’. “Speakin’ of Mechanicsburg, the people down in that ar mud-hole ain’t to be beat nowhere this side o’ Christmas. I’ve hearn o’ mean folks in my time, an’ I’ve preached ’bout ’em a few; but ever sense that feller, Bonnel, sold me a pint of red eye-whiskey—an’ half ov it backer juice—for a ’coon-skin, an’ then guv me a brass picayune fur change, I’ve stopped talkin’. Why, that chap was closer than the bark on a hickory tree; an’ ef I hadn’t hearn Parson Dilly say so, I’d ov swore it wasn’t er fact, he was cotch one day stealin’ acorns from a blind hog. Did you ever hear how that hossfly died? Well, never mind. It was too bad to talk ’bout, but heap too good for him. “But that ain’t what I was spoutin’ ’bout. As I was sayin’ afore, we had to ’pend on the varmints fur a livin’. Well, Ike Hamberlin, you see, was always sorter jubous o’ me, kase I kilt more bar nor he did; an’, as I was sayin’, I made a ’pointment with Ike to go out huntin’. Then, Ike, he thought he’d be kinder smart, and beat ‘Old Preach’ (as them Cole boys usen to call me), so, as soon as day crack he hollered up his puppies, an’ put! I spied what he was ’bout, fur I hearn him laffin’ to one o’ his niggers ’bout it the night afore—so, I told my gal Sal to fill my private tickler full o’ the old ‘raw,’ and then fixed up an’ tramped on arter him, but didn’t take none o’ my dogs. “Ike hadn’t got fur into the cane, ’fore the dogs they ’gan to whine an’ turn up the har on ther backs; an’, bimeby, they all tucked tail, an’ sorter sidled back to war he was stanin’. ‘Sick him!’ says Ike, but the cussed critters wouldn’t hunt a lick. I soon diskivered what was the matter, for I kalkilated them curs o’ hisn wasn’t worth shucks in a bar fight—so, I know’d thar was bar ’bout, if I didn’t see no sine. “Well, Ike he coaxed the dogs, an’ the more he coaxed the more they wouldn’t go, an’ when he found coaxin’ wouldn’t do, then he scolded and called ’em some of the hardest names ever you hearn, but the tarnation critters wouldn’t budge a peg.