wing is a heedless creature
who regyards his facetious mate as the very parent of fun, an' he goes
about with his y'ear cocked an' his mouth ajar, ready to laugh them 'hah,
hah!' laughs of his'n at every word his pard turns loose.

"Tom an' Jerry is different from the others. Bein' bigger an' havin'
besides the respons'bilities of the hour piled onto them as wheel mules
must, they cultivates a sooperior air an is distant an' reserved in their
attitoodes towards the other six. As to each other their pose needs more
deescription. Tom, the nigh wheeler--the one I rides when drivin'--is
infatyooated with Jerry. I hears a sky-sharp aforetime preach about
Jonathan an' David. Yet I'm yere to assert, son, that them sacred people
ain't on speakin' terms compared to the way that pore old lovin' Tom mule
feels towards Jerry.

"This affection of Tom's is partic'lar amazin' when you-all recalls the
fashion in which the sullen Jerry receives it. Doorin' the several years
I spends in their s'ciety I never once detects Jerry in any look or word
of kindness to Tom. Jerry bites him an' kicks him an' cusses him out
constant; he never tol'rates Tom closter than twenty foot onless at times
when he orders Tom to curry him. Shore, the imbecile Tom submits. On
sech o'casions when Jerry issues a summons to go over him, usin' his
upper teeth for a comb an' bresh, Tom is never so happy. Which he digs
an' delves at Jerry's ribs that a-way like it's a honour; after a half
hour, mebby, when Jerry feels refreshed s'fficient, he w'irls on Tom an'
dismisses him with both heels.

"'I track up on folks who's jest the same,' says Dan Boggs, one time when
I mentions this onaccountable infatyooation of Tom. 'This Jerry loves
that Tom mule mate of his, only he ain't lettin' on. I knows a lady
whose treatment of her husband is a dooplicate of Jerry's. She metes out
the worst of it to that long-sufferin' shorthorn at every bend in the
trail; it looks like he never wins a good word or a soft look from her
once. An' yet when that party cashes in, whatever does the lady do?
Takes a hooker of whiskey, puts in p'isen enough to down a dozen wolves,
an' drinks off every drop. 'Far'well, vain world, I'm goin' home,' says
the lady; 'which I prefers death to sep'ration, an' I'm out to jine my
beloved husband in the promised land.' I knows, for I attends the
fooneral of that family--said fooneral is a double-header as the lady,
bein' prompt, trails out