“‘Whatever do they teach in colleges, Doc?’ asks Dan.

“’They teaches all of the branches,” retorts Peets.

“‘An’ none of the roots,’ adds Colonel Sterett, ‘as a cunnin’ Yank once remarks on a o’casion sim’lar.’

“No, the Colonel an’ Peets don’t go lockin’ horns in these differences.  Both is a mighty sight too well brought up for that; moreover, they don’t allow to set the camp no sech examples.  They entertains too high a regyard for each other to take to pawin’ about pugnacious, verbal or otherwise.

“The Colonel’s information is as wide flung as a buzzard’s wing.  Thar’s mighty few mysteries he ain’t authorised to eloocidate.  An’ from time to time, accordin’ as the Colonel’s more or less in licker, he enlightens Wolfville on a multitoode of topics.  Which the Colonel is a profound eddicational innocence; that’s whatever!

“It’s one evenin’ an’ the moon is swingin’ high in the bloo-black heavens an’ looks like a gold doorknob to the portals of the eternal beyond.  Texas Thompson fixes his eyes tharon, meditative an’ pensive, an’ then he wonders: 

“‘Do you-all reckon, now, that folks is livin’ up thar?’

“‘Whatever do you think yourse’f, Colonel?’ says Enright, passin’ the conundrum over to the editor of the Coyote.  ’Do you think thar’s folks on the moon?’

“‘Do I think thar’s folks on the moon?’ repeats the Colonel as ca’mly confident as a club flush.  ‘I don’t think,—­I knows.’

“‘Whichever is it then?’ asks Dan Boggs, whose ha’r already begins to bristle, he’s that inquisitive.  ‘Simply takin’ a ignorant shot in the dark that away, I says, “No.”  That moon looks like a mighty lonesome loominary to me.’

“‘Jest the same,’ retorts the Colonel, an’ he’s a lot dogmatic, ’that planet’s fairly speckled with people.  An’ if some gent will recall the errant fancies of Black Jack to a sense of dooty, I’ll onfold how I knows.

“‘It’s when I’m crowdin’ twenty,’ goes on the Colonel, followin’ the ministrations of Black Jack, ‘an’ I’m visitin’ about the meetropolis of Looeyville.  I’ve been sellin’ a passel of runnin’ hosses; an’ as I rounds up a full peck of doubloons for the fourteen I disposes of, I’m feelin’ too contentedly cunnin’ to live.  It’s evenin’ an’ the moon is shinin’ same as now.  I jest pays six bits for my supper at the Galt House, an’ lights a ten cent seegyar—­Oh!  I has the bridle off all right!—­an’ I’m romancin’ leesurly along the street, when I encounters a party who’s ridin’ herd on one of these yere telescopes, the same bein’ p’inted at the effulgent moon.  Gents, she’s shorely a giant spy-glass, that instrooment is; bigger an’ longer than the smokestack of any steamboat between Looeyville an’ Noo Orleans.  She’s swung on a pa’r of shears; each stick a cl’ar ninety foot of Norway pine.  As I goes pirootin’ by, this gent with the telescope pipes briskly up.

“’"Take a look at the moon?”