ll man was pointed out as the aggressor, but
the stubby man said "he didn't want to appear agin' the crack-brained
cuss; that he guessed he (the said cuss) had got the worst of it."

But the assembled multitudes were not satisfied. They thought it was due
to them that they should have an explanation, and as the tall individual
seemed anxious, and the stubby individual didn't make any objections, a
ring was formed to give the parties a chance to be heard.

The stubby man said that while the other was "exercisin' his jaw, he'd
have some ham'neggs;" whilst he was eating, the tall individual told his
story, which was one of blighted hopes, disappointed expectations,
unrequited love, and unappreciated genius. Wagstaff's notes of his words
read as follows:

"'My name is Julius Jenkins, and I have a cousin named Betsey Brown; I
love my cousin Betsey; have always loved my cousin Betsey, from the time
when as children we tore in loving partnership our mutual pantalets and
petticoats (for these legs once wore pantalets, and their symmetry was
hidden from admiration by petticoats), looking for blackberries in a
cedar-swamp; from the time we sucked eggs together in the barn-yard and
'teetered' in happy sport upon the same board; from the time we built
playhouses in the garden and made puppy-love behind the currant bushes;
from those happy days of rural felicity until the present time, my
cousin Betsey has been the ideal of my soul. We used to eat bread and
milk out of the same bowl, dig angleworms with the same shovel, go
fishing in the same creek, steal apples from the same orchard, and crawl
through the same hole in the fence when the man chased us. Through all
my lonely life the memory of cousin Betsey has been my guardian angel. I
have been exposed to dire temptations; once I was reduced to such
extremity that I was about to earn my dinner by sawing wood, but my
cousin Betsey seemed to rise before me and say, "Julius, don't degrade
yourself;" and I didn't. I cast the saw to the earth, and begged my
dinner from a colored washerwoman. I once accepted a situation as a
clerk in a retail grocery. I stayed a week, but on every barrel of
sugar, on every bar of soap, in every keg of lard, in each individual
potato, in every bushel in all the cellar, I saw the reproachful face
of my cousin Betsey; it rose before me from the oily depths of the
butter-firkin, and from the cratery interior of the milk-can; the very
peanuts rose up in jud