Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/383

Rh to reduce his estimate of the Republican majority for 1905 by one vote."

"Come, Barney," said I,"the Confederate States of America has been out of existence for nearly forty years. You do not look older yourself. When was it that the deceased government exerted its foreign policy in your behalf?"

"Four months ago," said O Keefe, promptly. "The infamous foreign power I alluded to is still staggering from the official blow dealt it by Mr. Davis's contraband aggregation of states. That's why you see me cakewalking with the ex-rebs to the illegitimate tune about simmon seeds and cotton. I vote for the Great Father in Washington, but I am not going back on Mars' Jeff. You say the Confederacy has been dead forty years? Well, if it hadn't been for it, I'd have been breathing to-day with soul so dead I could n't have whispered a single cuss-word about my native land. The O'Keefes are not over-burdened with ingratitude."

I must have looked bewildered. "The war was over," I said vacantly, "in—" O'Keefe laughed loudly, scattering my thoughts.

"Ask old Doc Millikin if the war is over!" he shouted, hugely diverted. "Oh, no! Doc has n't surrendered yet. And the Confederate States! Well, I just told you they bucked officially and solidly and nationally against a foreign government four months ago and kept me from being shot. Old Jeff's country stepped in and brought me off under its wing while Roosevelt was having a gunboat repainted and waiting for the National Campaign Committee to look up whether I had ever scratched the ticket."

"Is n't there a story in this, Barney?" I asked.

"No," said O Keefe; "but I'll give you the facts. You know how I went down to Panama when this irritation about a canal began. I thought I'd get in on the ground floor. I did,