The Southern Herald

HE WAS NO FIGHTER.
What Came of Cutting a Man off Short
Who Had Something to Say.

It was about ten o'clock at night and
forty or fifty passengers were in the
depot or strolling about on the plat-
forms when a young man with a very
long neck and very long drawl to his
voice came up to six or eight of us who
sat on a big baggage truck and said:

"Gentlemen, there'll be a man out here
presently."

"Well, what of it?" asked one of the
group.

"He'll ask if any of you has a bottle
of whisky."

"Suppose he does?"

"Don't give him any. If you do he'll
get wild and I can't control him.
Please, gentlemen, don't offer him any
liquor. He's no fighter, but perhaps I
ought to say—"

"He won't get any whisky here."

"Thank you, gentlemen. As I set
out to tell you, he's no fighter, but I
ought to"—

"He don't care whether he's a fighter
or not."

"Thank you.
He may not come, but
if he does you can make excuses. Be
a little smooth with him. While, as I've
told you before, he's no fighter. he is"—

"And I told you we didn't care
whether he's a fighter or a duffer!" im-
patiently interrupted our spokesman,
who had been broken short off in tell-
ing a story.

"Well, but"—began the young man;
but no one paid any attention and he
retired.

It wasn't five minutes before a man
came out of the waiting room and
stood before us and asked:-

"Any one here got anything to drink?
I'm spittin' whole bales of cotton, and
there isn't a saloon within half a mile."

"Yes, we've all got something, but
you can't get a drop—not even a smell!"
shouted the story teller, who had just
begun his yarn to be interrupted again.

"Why not?"

"Because we are not filling up duf-
fers! Go on, now, or I'll throw you
over the house!"

"Will you? Whoop! That's my game
and here goes!"

He seized the story-teller and gave
him a toss which landed him on the
ridge pole of the station house. Then
he grabbed the next nearest and tossed
him upon the awning, and the third
went over a pile of baggage and into
the tender of a switch engine. The
rest of us got out of his reach, and he
picked up the baggage truck and flung
it upon the beams of the water tank.
He had a negro man ready to toss
when the young man came out and
seized him and took him away. The
three men had just been helped down
when the long-necked young man came
back to ask if any one was hurt.

"Look here, mister, what sort of a
man have you got there?" shouted the
story teller, who was badly bruised.

"Why, I started to tell you before,
He's no fighter, as I remarked, but he's
the feller who plays marbles with can-
non balls in my side show, and I wanted
to caution you particularly about not
offering to throw him over a house or
anything."—N. Y. Herald.