“It’s one evenin’ in the Red Light when Colonel Sterett, who’s got through his day’s toil on that Coyote paper he’s editor of, onfolds concernin’ a panther round-up which he pulls off in his yooth.

“‘This panther hunt,’ says Colonel Sterett, as he fills his third tumbler, ‘occurs when mighty likely I’m goin’ on seventeen winters.  I’m a leader among my young companions at the time; in fact, I allers is.  An’ I’m proud to say that my soopremacy that a-way is doo to the dom’nant character of my intellects.  I’m ever bright an’ sparklin’ as a child, an’ I recalls how my aptitoode for learnin’ promotes me to be regyarded as the smartest lad in my set.  If thar’s visitors, to the school, or if the selectmen invades that academy to sort o’ size us up, the teacher allers plays me on ’em.  I’d go to the front for the outfit.  Which I’m wont on sech harrowin’ o’casions to recite a ode—­the teacher’s done wrote it himse’f—­an’ which is entitled Napoleon’s Mad Career.  Thar’s twenty-four stanzas to it; an’ while these interlopin’ selectmen sets thar lookin’ owley an’ sagacious, I’d wallop loose with the twenty-four verses, stampin’ up and down, an’ accompanyin’ said recitations with sech a multitood of reckless gestures, it comes plenty clost to backin’ everybody plumb outen the room.  Yere’s the first verse: 

  I’d drink an’ sw’ar an’ r’ar an’ t’ar
    An’ fall down in the mud,
  While the y’earth for forty miles about
    Is kivered with my blood.

“’You-all can see from that speciment that our schoolmaster ain’t simply flirtin’ with the muses when he originates that epic; no sir, he means business; an’ whenever I throws it into the selectmen, I does it jestice.  The trustees used to silently line out for home when I finishes, an’ never a yeep.  It stuns ’em; it shore fills ’em to the brim!

“‘As I gazes r’arward,’ goes on the Colonel, as by one rapt impulse he uplifts both his eyes an’ his nosepaint, ’as I gazes r’arward, I says, on them sun-filled days, an’ speshul if ever I gets betrayed into talkin’ about ’em, I can hardly t’ar myse’f from the subject.  I explains yeretofore, that not only by inclination but by birth, I’m a shore-enough ’ristocrat.  This captaincy of local fashion I assoomes at a tender age.  I wears the record as the first child to don shoes throughout the entire summer in that neighbourhood; an’ many a time an’ oft does my yoothful but envy-eaten compeers lambaste me for the insultin’ innovation.  But I sticks to my moccasins; an’ to-day shoes in the Bloo Grass is almost as yooniversal as the licker habit.

“’Thar dawns a hour, however, when my p’sition in the van of Kaintucky ton comes within a ace of bein’ ser’ously shook.  It’s on my way to school one dewey mornin’ when I gets involved all inadvertent in a onhappy rupture with a polecat.  I never does know how the misonderstandin’ starts.  After all, the seeds of said dispoote is by no means important; it’s enough to say that polecat finally has me thoroughly convinced.