The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-08-25
Yarns of the Courthouse Gang
No. Shy WELLINGTON vANDIvER

"All this here talk about the American eagle" said the sheriff, as he took up the checker board and began to arrange the buttons, lis pure gulf, and nonsense. l erhe eagle is not a business bird, he is rot a domestic bird, his plumage is noth- l ing to brag about his bill does not equal a duck's-he is a dead failure as poultry; but gimme the American hen, every time.
 "The picture of the hen ought to be on our silver dollars, instead or the puz- gard the mint puts there. Why, the Amer ican hen is crack jack! You can eat her before she Is born, and you can eat her after she is dead, and when night comes on she changes to rooster An old woman over on Peckerwood creek had a speckled hen that went to setting on some round cakes of bath soap, and she matched out a bath-tub and some
 Yes this here bath habit. and sani- tary advice is simply ruining the coun- try," asserted the Backwoods Parson. "ln my young days over on the Tally poosy we washed often enough, the Lord knows Never a Saturday night passed but that my old mother stripped my shirt off and rubbed me with I've soap, and corn cob, until I didn't have skin enough left to pad saddle; but nowadays
 
 two or three times a week, on account of their health, they say Health! nothing Why, in them days, we boys never had no disease that you couldn't cure With paregoric, turpentine and castor oil, but now they have diseases with long Latin names and fellow is hauled off to the hospital the minute he has a pain in his gizzard Old Bill Peavy, over in Ran dolph ain't been wet all over In forty year. and yet. old Bill is as healthy as A razor-back hog. Some folks is like dllcks they can splash In the water all day. and yet not be clean, and others Is like turkeys which don't have to wash more than once a year, and Is clean all the time. Enduring of the war, l got up on log. and sorter washed myself. once, and since that time my general health"
 Following the invariahle practice Of the "club" of interrupting speaker be- fore he had finished his subject, the Old Confederate butted in:
 While am now. mighty set against booze. and powerfully in favor of en- forcing all these here prohibition laws. there was a time when 1 a prisoner on Johnson's Island, when l was sorter in favor of the wet ticket A fool fel- low. named Morgan. In block two, crooked a gun barrel. got him couple of old canteens, and with some bread crumbs. and molasses, he made a arti- ole of moonshine whisky that had a right smart influence with you when. you took a couple of snifters of it. Sorter tasted like home and mother.' to us boys and made us forget. for the moment. the lice and the dam Yankees
 of course, the stuff, when We drank if. felt like a torchlight procession going down your throat. but it wasn't bit worse than the blind tiger poison they sell nowadays. l took it pretty regularly. and one night dug hole out of that prison and escaped, and the only time ever was rich in my. life was that par ticular night because of the fact that
 me and a Yankee sentry had a million dollars between us that night. l was on one side of bank that had million dollars in fl. and the Tank was in an