ver
remembered anything in my life as I remember them. They're never out of
my mind, night or day. I've got into a way of dreaming I'm back to
Barnesville, talking to the boys at the post-office, or listening to
Jenny playing 'Home, Sweet Home' or 'The Maiden's Prayer.' I was a bit
down yesterday and couldn't eat, and in the night there I was in the
little dining-room, putting away fried chicken and hot biscuits as fast
as the nigger girl could bring the dishes on the table. Good Lord! how
good they were! There's nothing like them in Washington city," he added,
and he heaved a big sigh.

"Why, man," said Tom, "you're homesick!"

The Judge heaved another sigh, thrusting his hands deeper into his
pockets and looking out of the window.

"Yes, by Jingo!" he said; "that's what I am."

He withdrew his gaze from the world outside the window and returned to
Tom.

"You see," he said, "I've lived different. When a man has been born and
brought up among the mountains and lived a country life among folks that
are all neighbours and have neighbourly ways, city life strikes him hard.
Politics look different here; they _are_ different. They're not of the
neighbourly kind. Politicians ain't joking each other and having a good
time. They don't know anything about the other man, and they don't care a
damn. What's Hamlin County to them? Why, they don't know anything _about_
Hamlin County, and, as far as I've got, they don't want to. They've got
their own precincts to attend to, and they're going to do it. When a new
man comes in, if he ain't a pretty big fellow that knows how to engineer
things and say things to make them listen to him, he's only another
greenhorn. Now, I'm not a big fellow, Tom; I've found that out! and the
first two months after I came, blamed if I wasn't so homesick and
discouraged that if it hadn't been for seeming to go back on the boys,
durned if I don't believe I should have gone home."

Big Tom sat and regarded his honest face thoughtfully.

"Perhaps you're a bigger man than you know," he said. "Perhaps you'll
find that out in time, and perhaps other people will."

The Judge shook his head.

"I've not got education enough," he said. "And I'm not an orator. All
there is to _me_ is that I'm not going back on the boys and Hamlin. I
came here to do the square thing by them and the United States, and
blamed if I ain't going to do it as well as I know how."

"Now, look here," said Big Tom, "that's pretty goo