don't anyway.'

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag,

but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than

that--and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and

always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something

of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start,

and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she

get excited and desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up,

and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and

sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust

and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her

nose--and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near

as you could cipher it down.

"And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he

warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a

chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a

different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of

a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces.

And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him

over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson--which was the

name of the pup--Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was

satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else--and the bets being doubled

and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up;

and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int

Sketches New and Old