The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-20
Yarns of the Courthouse Gang
NO. xr-By WELLINGTON vANDIvER

but Tucker said politics in this state
 was getting so rotten that the Man in
 the Moon held his nose when he sailed
 over us. He said folks would have to wear
 clothes pins on their noses during a cam paign If things didn't improve. But he
 went on to say that he wasn't taking any interest in politics, now, nohow-but that he was going to get even win that in fernal Bunk Battles, if it took him life
 time; that he intended to get lawyer to sue Bunk for s25,OoO damages and costs.
 Tt seems that Tucker and Bunk diff fered about the power of the human eye
 over animals, and to clinch the argument
 Breedlove offered to bet 75 cents that l he could tame the savagest beast that
 ever walked, If he was just allowed the
 chance to fix his gaze on him good and
 proper Bunk took the bet and trotted
 out a plain, unadorned William H. Goat
 as the subject of the experiment. That
 Billie hadn't been denatured or chemically
 treated or nothing, but was just a nat
 ural country butter, but the kids had
 deviled Beecher-which was the name of
 the goat-until he could butt the stuff
 ing out of a stone jail-he had Populte
 whiskers, and enough devilment in him
 to start a Mexican revolution. When all the preparations was completed Bunk
 carefully bit each coin to see if it was silver, and then he says to Breedlove:
 Now Tucker. just ike your eye on Beech
 CT and restrain his ferocity while I climb tt, ,fr comfortable limb of the young tree and
 yelled to the goat. Bust him, Beecherl
 Hit him where he looks the biggest!'
 And that Billie bleated an unearthly
 blart, lowered his head and came at Tucker like a switch engine. Breedlove said that outcast of a goat was bigger,
 by eight feet, than decent goat ought to be- and that he wasn't more than
 half ready to pin him with his eye when
 that cannibal of Billie hit him in the
 watch fob. with a jolt like the eruption of Vesuvious and butted his Waterbury
 into doll rags. Tucker said furthermore,
 that before he could get his breath that | cantankerous old fiend of a William H.
 Goat had pranced around on the south
 side of Tucker and started an earthquake in the bust of his trowsers. totally un- expected to him.
 Tucker sprinted for a persimmon tree. near by but Beecher caught him half way. and spread Tucker over a quarter of an acre of plowed ground, and en- during this entire fracas that trifiing
 Bunk Battles was snugly perched on a safe limb, roofing for the goat and VelIinU. tf7 CT" Welt him again, Beecheri" Three strikes and out" and such fool
 ishness as that; and all the time that
 Bunk person was laughing like Jess Stallings political convention in the wiregrass. It required two negro hoe hands and bulldog to rescue Tucker,
 and he swears that he is going to put the law on Bunk Battles. if 1t takes his whole cotton crop"
 "The boys don't serenade the girls now like they used to do ten years my heart to think of those days and nights that are gone forever when we used to stand under the stars, and warble like house afire. the love dit ties of long ago, Days all sunlight, and nights filled with music. Those glori- ous summer nights when we touched the light guitar, comfortably tanked up on Budweiser, and howled beneath the boudoir window of Miranda w. Sprawls, with the midnight stars twink ing at us in the endeavor to get us to quit and go home. In them days you wasn't in it with your girl unless you gave her serenade; and many time have contracted pneumonia, neu- ralgia gastritis, and the sWinney in the effort to howl the paint off the weatherboarding, under her chamber
 window. at midnight's holy hour. And If a soft hand parted the curtains and dropped through the shadows red rose in response to my vocal gym nstics, it was then that I walked on air and capered like a hound pup with high-life rubbed on his hide. The last