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“Needless to state he referred to that sterling leader of Fulman County’s faithful cohorts, Captain Stonewall Jackson Bugg, Esquire.

“And so everybody voted for Stony. We knowed of course that while Stony Bugg had both talents and education he warn’t no sich genius as Colonel Bud Crittenden when it came to storing away licker; yet so far as the record showed he never had been waterlooed by anybody. And we couldn’t ask no more than that. Stony was all hoped up and proud at being selected.

“Then there came up the question of picking out the party of the second part, as Colonel Bud said he would call him for short. Colonel Bud said he felt the proper object for treatment, beyond the peradventure of a doubt, was that there Mr. Wash Burnett, of Bear Grass.

“He believed the caucus would ricolect this here Burnett gen’elman referred to by the Chair. And when he described him we all done so, owing to his onusual appearance. He was a little teeny feller, rising of five feet tall, with a cough that unbuttoned his vest about every three minutes. He had eyes ‘way round on the side of his head like a grasshopper and the blamest, busiest, biggest, scariest, nervousest Adamses’ apple I ever see. It ‘peared like it tried to beat his brains out every time he taken a swaller of licker–or even water.

“Right there old Squire Buck Throckmorton objected to the selection of Mr. Wash Burnett. Near as I can recall here’s what Squire says:

“‘You all air suttenly fixing to make a monstrous big mistake. I’ve give a heap of study in my time to this question of licker drams. I have observed that when you combine in a gen’elman them two features jest mentioned–a Adamses’ apple that’s always running up and down like a cat squirrel on a snag, and eyes away ’round yonder so’s he can see both ways at once without moving his head–you’ve got a gen’elman that’s specially created to store away licker.

“‘I don’t care ef your Bear Grass County man is so shortwaisted he can use his hip pockets for year-muffs in the winter time. Concede, if you will, that every time he coughs it shakes the enamel off’n his teeth. The pint remains, I repeat, my feller citizens, that there ain’t no licker ever distilled can throw him with them eyes and that there Adamses’ apple. You gen’elmen ‘d a sight better pick out some big feller which his eyes is bunched up close together like the yallers in a double yolk aig and which his Adamses’ apple is comparatively stationary.’

“But Colonel Bud, he wouldn’t listen. Maybe he was kinder jealous at seeing old Squire Buck Throckmorton setting hisse’f up as a jedge of human nature that-a-way. Even the greatest of us air but mortal, and I reckon Colonel Bud wouldn’t admit that anybody could outdo him reading character offhand, and he taken the floor agin. Replying to his venerable friend and neighbor, he would say that the Squire was talking like a plain derned fool. Continuing he would add that it didn’t make no difference if both eyes was riding the bridge of the nose side-saddle, or if they was crowding the ears for position.

“‘Now, as to the Adamses’ apple, which he would consider next in this brief reply,’ he went on to explain, ‘Science teached us that the Adamses’ apple didn’t have no regular functions to speak of, and what few it did have bore no relation to the consumption of licker in the reg’lar and customary manner, viz., to-wit, by swallowing of the same from demijohn, dipper, tumbler or gourd. The Adamses’ apple was but a natchel ornament nestled at the base of the chin whiskers. He asked if any gen’elman in the sound of his voice ever see a bowlder on the side of a dreen, enlessen it was covered, in whole or in part, by vines? The same wise provision of Nature was to be observed in the Adamses’ apple, it being, ef he mout be pardoned for using such a figger of speech, at sich a time, the bowlder, and the chin whiskers, the vine.