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Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851

"The Prairie"

Still you
may make out to keep soul and body together, with what is left,"
reluctantly eyeing a piece large enough to feed twenty men, but which
he felt compelled to abandon from satiety; "cut in nigher to the
heart, as the old man says, and you will find the riches of the
piece."
"The heart!" exclaimed the Doctor, inwardly delighted to learn there
was a distinct organ to be submitted to his inspection. "Ay, let me
see the heart--it will at once determine the character of the animal--
certes this is not the cor--ay, sure enough it is--the animal must be
of the order belluae, from its obese habits!"
He was interrupted by a long and hearty, but still a noiseless fit of
merriment, from the trapper, which was considered so ill-timed by the
offended naturalist, as to produce an instant cessation of speech, if
not a stagnation of ideas.
"Listen to his beasts' habits and belly orders," said the old man,
delighted with the evident embarrassment of his rival; "and then he
says it is not the core! Why, man, you are farther from the truth than
you are from the settlements, with all your bookish laming and hard
words; which I have, once for all, said cannot be understood by any
tribe or nation east of the Rocky Mountains.


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