That is to
say, your conversation, which is agreeable enough over a well baked
buffaloe's hump, and these damnable thongs of hide, which, according
to my experience, can be pleasant nowhere. A single stroke of your
knife would be of more service, just now, than the longest speech that
was ever made in a Kentucky court-house."
"Ay, court-houses are the 'happy hunting-grounds,' as a Red-skin would
say, for them that are born with gifts no better than such as lie in
the tongue. I was carried into one of the lawless holes myself once,
and it was all about a thing of no more value than the skin of a deer.
The Lord forgive them!--the Lord forgive them!--they knew no better,
and they did according to their weak judgments, and therefore the more
are they to be pitied; and yet it was a solemn sight to see an aged
man, who had always lived in the air, laid neck and heels by the law,
and held up as a spectacle for the women and boys of a wasteful
settlement to point their fingers at!"
"If such be your opinions of confinement, honest friend, you had
better manifest the same, by putting us at liberty with as little
delay as possible," said Middleton, who, like his companion, began to
find the tardiness of his often-tried companion quite as extraordinary
as it was disagreeable.
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