Blue-grass blade., 1895-01-13

ed for single failure.
! have long noticed that there is moth
ing that so acts as modifying ointment
to the yEounded feelings of the mascu.
line Kentuckian as to call him Colonel
In my experience as a journalist
hBve made hundred men mad and
again got to be all solid with them by
alludtpSto them, apparently inadvert-
entity aFoCol." this or that, in some sub
sequent newspaper article.
Here er there are two prominent
citizeps of this State, who are of petite
physical get up, that have given my
forepsaE absolute instructions are to be
called iu'the Blade, Colonel, all the time,
and have been alluding to both of
them as "Johnnie" or even "little John
ME-, ALL khe time. These are Colonel
Johns Shelby and Colonel John A..
Bell OF he Georgetown Times.
Yoa Aay. in Kentucky, with impunity
call I, bg man big, and you mey call a
little ,ean big, but they draw the line at
calli,i,As little man little.
As ,ook upon myself today wonder
that I ,ni not corpse.
But about that fable; have, hun
dred times in my life, seen a little bit of
dog run out swapping and barking at
big cog, and the big dog would just
get up and get away from there double
quick, and have always felt like patting
the big dog on the head, and saying
"GoR1fold doggy" and giving him big
piec,. OF "red hot wienerwurst," just to
see u veritable case of dog eat dog" !"
and have always thought what a wise
dispa asation of Providence, with large
P. il il, that big dogs and big men are
not uilt so that they get mad so easy as
littld dogs and the little men.
Biz dogs and big men seem to go on
the shpposition that people know they
could tight if they wanted to, and so they
are kver honing after fight; but the
littlellogs and the little men seem to be
afrai,f that people may think they wont
fight because they are little, and so they
alw ats have to show their faith by their
work.; and if you just want to think
that YOU have stepped into a Waller
jackqs nest, you just go fooling around
littk man, and you will have a fight on
your bands, or on your head, before you
can Int your eye.
Wien this same Colonel Shelby that
lately got into my wool, and scattered
samples Of my curls and whiskers on the
circ e fiambient air, bounced lawyer Viii
son, the court room IN Washington,
-;~< ,,,<s==-I -2.=c9,.:r-;a g l,,-rhena.ior
case, Hnd spatted Wilson in the face, and
Wilson got out of Colonel Shelby's way
just az soon and just as quietly as possible,
and swallowed the little indignation that
he felt, and justly remembered that
Colonel Shelby was Kentuckian, just
felt like saying "Good old doggy; good
old Wilson," and giving him piece of
weinewurst, just to see him wag his tail.
Every first class man in the country
applauded the way that Wilson
acted, and when 1 saw that l held the
same hand played it the same way.
And now what want to say to Colonel
Shelby is this; he has knocked out Will
son and me, and demonstrated to the
satisfaction of an admiring world that
he will fight and it is good time for
him to quit while his credit is good be-
cause Colonel Shelby may mistake his
man some of these days, and run up
against some fellow who does not view
these matters as Wilson and l do, and
that fellow will slap the Colonel so many
summersets that the Colonel wont know
whether it's himself or a@flutter wheel
that he sees spinning, and he will see
fire works for a month that discount
Paine's best 4th of July efforts.
Big fools and bull dogs and roosters
may fight, because they haven't any
brains with which to defend themselves,
and taking it out of the other fellows
"hide" is the only mode of defence they
have; but Colonel Shelby is man of
big brain and small muscle, and when he
steps into the pugilistic arena he is just
as much out OF his element as the whale
was when he waded ashore, and went out
on "dry land" to throw up his contract
with Jonah, when the whale found he had
bit off more than he could chaw, and that
you can't keep good man down."
Colonel Shelby's idea of fighting is
exactly like that of a woman. have
had many fight with my wife, and al
ways qiit quite as mad as was with
ColonG Shelby. She would catch me
in the beard, and then l would have to
give. up or knock her down, and of
course I would not hurt any woman that
bad. But when Colonel Shelby caught
me in the beard, if he had been two or
three times as big as he was there was
the way of getting him loose that could
not practice on woman. looked at
his nice little walking stick, and sizing
it up as family heir loom that he had
inherited from the first governor of Ken
lucky, instead of hair loom as it prov
ed to be, just supposed he was carrying
it for the legitimate purpose of assist
ance in decentralization, and could not
suppose he had brought it along as a
kind of lictors rod, or Aaron's rod with
some kind of a Presbyterian Bible snake
trick to it, and when he fired away with
the thing and knocked it all into tooth
picks oyer my foot ball head of hair, l
thought that considering the relative
price of toothpicks and canes, it was a
bad investment; parvenue scrub can get
toothpiSks and everybody can not get an
cestral canes with ancient gubunatorial
legends,wreathed around them like the
snakes around Mercurys walking cane
or that famoas "copperhead"--aud, for
that matter, coppertail--around Moses
pole.
So, especially after saw that my spec
taeles were uot broken, was sorry that
the Colonel had broken his stick.
My friends have frequently told me
that this hard head of mine would dc
some damage, some dav.
Regarded as mere piece of war
strategy gotten up regardless cf cost
as such strategies generally are, the
GOHb de- baton yOHgf. bdyCe 1H'H I'M