“You see that yourself.  Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as it calls forth.  I can’t write with comfort when I am interrupted so much as I have been to-day.  I like this berth well enough, but I don’t like to be left here to wait on the customers.  The experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed.  A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my skin won’t hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks.  Take it altogether, I never had such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day.  No; I like you, and I like your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the customers, but you see I am not used to it.  The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger.  The paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets.  All that mob of editors will come—­and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for breakfast.  I shall have to bid you adieu.  I decline to be present at these festivities.  I came South for my health, I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly.  Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for me.”

After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital.

The story of the bad little boy—­[Written about 1865]

Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim—­though, if you will notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school books.  It was strange, but still it was true, that this one was called Jim.

He didn’t have any sick mother, either—­a sick mother who was pious and had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at rest but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt that the world might be harsh and cold toward him when she was gone.  Most bad boys in the Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers, who teach them to say, “Now, I lay me down,” etc., and sing them to sleep with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them good night, and kneel down by the bedside and weep.  But it was different with this fellow.  He was