“So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was too late.  He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised up and sighed, and says, ’Confound it, I don’t seem to understand this thing, no way; however, I’ll tackle her again.’  He fetched another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he couldn’t.  He says, ’Well, I never struck no such a hole as this before; I’m of the opinion it’s a totally new kind of a hole.’  Then he begun to get mad.  He held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself black in the face.  I never see a bird take on so about a little thing.  When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute; then he says, ’Well, you’re a long hole, and a deep hole, and a mighty singular hole altogether—­but I’ve started in to fill you, and I’m damned if I don’t fill you, if it takes a hundred years!’

“And with that, away he went.  You never see a bird work so since you was born.  He laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck.  He never stopped to take a look anymore—­he just hove ’em in and went for more.  Well, at last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out.  He comes a-dropping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his acorn in and says, ‘now I guess I’ve got the bulge on you by this time!’ So he bent down for a look.  If you’ll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with rage.  He says, ’I’ve shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one of ’em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes!’

“He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions and begun to free his mind.  I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say.

“Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops to inquire what was up.  The sufferer told him the whole circumstance, and says, ’Now yonder’s the hole, and if you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself.’  So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says, ‘How many did you say you put in there?’ ’Not any less than two tons,’ says the sufferer.  The other jay went and looked again.  He couldn’t seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays come.  They all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done.