Old Wells 241 



nohow, because both animals were soused in mud 

 from head to tail. 



BEER 'COON LOST THE FIGHT 



Finally I could hear the dog whining and the 

 other thing was still, and hurriedly putting a 

 couple of rails down into the well, slantways, 

 I descended and assisted my old faithful out. I 

 threw the remains of Brer 'Coon up out of the 

 death-pit and soused some water from another 

 well over the dog and his late antagonist. You 

 should have seen that boy and his dog, the former 

 holding a wet, muddy dead 'coon by its tail, over 

 his shoulder, arriving at the door of the farmhouse 

 kitchen. They'd have made a picture that that 

 famous painting ''The Return of the Hunters" 

 would have seemed tame beside. 



JUST A YANKEE LIB 



Yes, drawing water with a rope and pail, from 

 even a shallow well, on a sultry August day, was 

 a strenuous task for a small boy. I've read some- 

 where that, in the United States, where torna- 

 does are not infrequent happenings, and liars are 

 plentiful, the suction of the wind is so strong 

 that the bottoms of the wells are pulled up several 

 feet and the pumps thus stand away up in the air 

 after a storm. Sounds to me like fiction but I 

 could have wished that something like that had 



