iece of good
fortune that they did not fall in love with the same girl and bring
their rivalry into their affairs of the heart, for they were only men,
and nothing could have kept them friends. But they came quite as near
it as they could, for Matilda Benson was as bright a girl as Martha
Mason, and when Ike married her she was an even-running contestant
with her friend, Martha, for the highest social honors of their own
particular set.

It was a foregone conclusion that when they were married and settled
they should live near each other. So the houses were distant from each
other only two or three doors. It was because every one knew every one
else's business in that locality that Sandy Worthington took it upon
himself to taunt the two men about their bone of contention.

"Mr. Johnson," he would say, when, coming from the down-town store
where he worked, he would meet the two coming from their own labors in
the brickyard, "how are you an' Mistah Johnsonham mekin' it ovah yo'
names?"

"Well, I don' know that Johnsonham is so much of a name," Ike would
say; and Jim would reply: "I 'low it's mo' name than Johnson, anyhow."

"So is stealin' ham mo' than stealin'," was the other's rejoinder, and
then his friends would double up with mirth.

Sometimes the victorious repartee was Jim's, and then the laugh was on
the other side. But the two went at it all good-naturedly, until one
day, one foolish day, when they had both stopped too often on the way
home, Jim grew angry at some little fling of his friend's, and burst
into hot abuse of him. At first Ike was only astonished, and then his
eyes, red with the dust of the brick-field, grew redder, the veins of
his swarthy face swelled, and with a "Take that, Mistah Johnsonham,"
he gave Jim a resounding thwack across the face.

It took only a little time for a crowd to gather, and, with their
usual tormentor to urge them on, the men forgot themselves and went
into the fight in dead earnest. It was a hard-fought battle. Both
rolled in the dust, caught at each other's short hair, pummeled, bit
and swore. They were still rolling and tumbling when their wives,
apprised of the goings on, appeared upon the scene and marched them
home.

After that, because they were men, they kept a sullen silence between
them, but Matilda and Martha, because they were women, had much to say
to each other, and many unpleasant epithets to hurl and hurl again
across the two yards that intervened betw