298 ON THE FBONTIEB, 



said : " Strangar ! I perceive thet you air a gentleman end a 

 scholard, end doubtless air a fine jedge uv good whisky ; 

 tharfore, I thenk yeou keindly, end will partake, if so be es 

 yeou thenk I em fit to eat with Christings ; but yeou see I 

 warned yeou truly wen I sed I war naturally uv an impa- 

 tient disposish." I assured him it did not matter in the 

 least, and that I greatly admired sincerity of conduct ; that 

 if a man really was as mad as a hatter about anything, and 

 made no display of his feelings, he was guilty of duplicity. 

 This view of the subject seemed to afford him great satis- 

 faction ; he also took great credit to himself for not 

 allowing his " natural disposish " to lead him to use bad 

 expressions ; for, said he, " I war raised stric Methodee, end 

 nary a man hev ever hern me say a profane werd nohow 

 nevar." 



From that evening, " Old Potsmasher " as the boys 

 irreverently nicknamed him remained a guest at my mess, 

 affording much quiet entertainment by his quaint remarks 

 and original views of things in general ; and, out of respect, 

 I suppose, to the attributes he had invested me with those 

 of being a gentleman, a scholar, and a fine judge of good 

 whisky, the three graces of frontierdom he behaved, on 

 the whole, tolerably reasonably during the time we were 

 together. Sometimes he became very communicative 

 about his personal affairs, but I could never make out 

 why he had come to the frontier. I suppose he had, like 

 many more of his class, simply gravitated there. The 

 reason he gave for wanting to go to Central Arizona was 

 because he had never been there and knew nothing about 

 it, and therefore "jedged" it would suit him, because every 



