Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales - The Original Classic Edition. Taylor Pritchett Robert

hand for an hour, and never said a word. But it resulted next year in more cabins on the hillsides and in the hollows; and in the years that followed the cabins were full of candy-haired children who grew up into a race of the best, the bravest, and the noblest people the sun in heaven ever shone upon.

       In the bright, bright hereafter, when all the joys of all the ages are gathered up and condensed into globules of transcendent ecstacy, I doubt whether there will be anything half so sweet as were the candy-smeared, ruby lips of the country maidens to the jeans-jack- eted swains who tasted them at the candy-pulling in the happy long ago.

       (Sung by Gov. Taylor to air of "Down on the Farm.")

       In the happy long ago,

       When I used to draw the bow,

       At the old log cabin hearthstone all aglow,

       Oh! the fiddle laughed and sung, And the puncheons fairly rung,

       With the clatter of the shoe soles long ago. Oh! the merry swings and whirls

       Of the happy boys and girls,

       In the good old time cotillion long ago! Oh! they danced the highland fling,

       And they cut the pigeon wing,

       To the music of the fiddle and the bow. But the mischief and the mirth,

       And the frolics 'round the hearth,

       And the flitting of the shadows to and fro, Like a dream have passed away--

       Now I'm growing old and gray,

       And I'll soon hang up the fiddle and the bow. When a few more notes I've made,

       When a few more tunes I've played,

       I'll be sleeping where the snowy daises grow.

       But my griefs will all be o'er

       When I reach the happy shore,

       Where I'll greet the friends who loved me long ago.

       Oh! how sweet, how precious to us all are the memories of the happy long ago!

       THE OLD VIRGINIA REEL.

       THE BANQUET.

       Let us leave the "egg flip" of the country dance, and take a bowl of egg-nog at the banquet. It was a modern banquet for men only. Music flowed; wine sparkled; the night was far spent--it was in the wee sma' hours. The banquet was given by Col. Punk who was the promoter of a town boom, and who had persuaded the banqueters that "there were millions in it." He had purchased some old

       sedge fields on the outskirts of creation, from an old squatter on the domain of Dixie, at three dollars an acre; and had stocked them at three hundred dollars an acre. The old squatter was a partner with the Colonel, and with his part of the boodle nicely done up in

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       his wallet, was present with bouyant hopes and feelings high. Countless yarns were spun; numberless jokes passed 'round the table until, in the ecstacy of their joy, the banqueters rose from the table and clinked their glasses together, and sang to chorus:

       "Landlord, fill the flowing bowl

       Until it doth run over; Landlord fill the flowing bowl Until it doth run over;

       For to-night we'll merry merry be, For to-night we'll merry merry be, For to-night we'll merry merry be; And tomorrow we'll get sober."

       The whole banquet was drunk (as banquets usually are), and the principal stockholders finally succumbed to the music of "Old

       Kentucky Bourbon," and sank to sleep under the table. The last toast on the programme was announced. It was a wonderful toast--

       "Our mineral resources:" The old squatter rose in his glory, about three o'clock in the morning, to respond to this toast, and thus he responded:

       "Mizzer Churman and Gent-tul-men of the Banquet: I have never made mineralogy a study, nor zoology, nor any other kind of 'ol-ogy,' but if there haint m-i-n-e-r-l in the deestrick which you gent-tul-men have jist purchased from me at sitch magnifercent figers, then the imagernation of man is a deception an' a snare. But gent-tul-men, you caint expect to find m-i-n-e-r-l without plenty uv diggin'. I have been diggin' thar for the past forty year fur it, an' haint never struck it yit, I hope you gen-tul-men will strike it some time endurin' the next forty year." Here, with winks and blinks and clinched teeth, the old Colonel pulled his coat tail; he was spoiling the town boom. But he would not down. He continued in the same eloquent strain: "Gent-tul-men, you caint expect to find m-i-n-e-

       r-l without plenty uv diggin.' You caint expect to find nothin' in this world without plenty uv diggin'. There is no excellence without labor gent-tul-men. If old Vanderbilt hadn't a-been persevering in his pertickler kind uv dig-gin', whar would he be to-day? He wouldn't now be a rich man, a-ridin' the billers of old ocean in his magnifercent 'yatchet.' If I hadn't a-been perseverin', an' hadn't

       a-kep on a-dig-gin' an' a-diggin, whar would I have been to-day? I mout have been seated like you gent-tul-men, at this stupendu-ous banquet, with my pockets full of watered stock, and some other old American citizen mout have been deliverin' this eulogy on our m-i-n-e-r-l resources. Gent-tul-men, my injunction to you is never to stop diggin'. And while you're a-diggin', cultivate a love for the beautiful, the true and the good. Speakin' of the beautiful, the true, and the good, gent-tul-men, let us not forgit woman at this magnifercent banquet--Oh! woman, woman, woman! when the mornin' stars sung together for joy--an' woman--God bless

       'er----Great God, feller citerzens, caint you understand!!!!"

       THE BANQUET.

       At the close of this great speech the curtain fell to slow music, and there was a panic in land stocks.

       THERE IS MUSIC ALL AROUND US.

       There is music all around us, there is music everywhere. There is no music so sweet to the American ear as the music of politics. There is nothing that kindles the zeal of a modern patriot to a whiter heat than the prospect of an office; there is nothing that cools it off so quickly as the fading out of that prospect.

       I stood on the stump in Tennessee as a candidate for Governor, and thus I cut my eagle loose: "Fellow Citizens, we live in the grandest country in the world. It stretches

       From Maine's dark pines and crags of snow

       To where magnolia breezes blow;

       It stretches from the Atlantic Ocean on the east, to the Pacific Ocean on the west"--and an old fellow jumped up in my crowd and threw his hat in the air and shouted: "Let 'er stretch, durn 'er--hurrah for the Dimocrat Party."