Which we soon found out the secret of old Daddy
Withers's life--that there innocent-looking old
jigger was a poet. He was kind of proud of it and
kind of shamed of it both to oncet. The way
it come out was when the doctor says one of them
quotations he is always getting off, and the old man
he looks pleased and says the rest of the piece it
dropped out of straight through.
Then they had a great time quoting it at each
other, them two, and I seen the doctor is good to
loaf around there the rest of the day, like as not.
Purty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud-
looking over something or other, and she leans over
and whispers to the old man:
"Shall I bring it out, Lemuel?"
The old man, he shakes his head, no. But she
slips into the house anyhow, and fetches out a
little book with a pale green cover to it, and hands
it to the doctor.
"Bless my soul," says Doctor Kirby, looking at
the old man, "you don't mean to say you write
verse yourself?"
The old man, he gets red all over his face, and up
into the roots of his white hair, and down into his
white beard, and makes believe he is a little mad at
the old lady fur showing him off that-a-way.
"Mother," he says, "yo' shouldn't have done
that!" They had had a boy years before, and he
had died, but he always called her mother the same
as if the boy was living.
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