Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/386

 of the Colombian cannibals, hey? Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light the star-spangled banner has fluked in the fight? What 's the matter with the War Department, hey? It's a great thing to be a citizen of a gold-standard nation, ain t it?' "'Rub it in, Doc, all you want, says I. 'I guess we 're weak on foreign policy.' "'For a Yank,' says Doc, putting on his specs and talking more mild, you ain't so bad. If you had come from below the line I reckon I would have liked you right smart. Now since your country has gone back on you, you have to come to the old doctor whose cotton you burned and whose mules you stole and whose niggers you freed to help you. Ain't that so, Yank?'

"'It is,' says I, heartily, 'and let 's have a diagnosis of the case right away, for in two weeks' time all you can do is to hold an autopsy and I don't want to be amputated if I can help it.' "'Now,' says Doc, businesslike, 'it 's easy enough for you to get out of this scrape. Money'll do it. You 've got to pay a long string of 'em from General Pomposo down to this anthropoid ape guarding your door. About ten dollars will do the trick. Have you got the money?'

"'Me?' says I. 'I 've got one Chile dollar, two real pieces, and a medio.' "'Then if you 've any last words, utter 'em,' says that old reb. 'The roster of your financial budget sounds quite much to me like the noise of a requiem.'

"'Change the treatment,' says I. 'I admit that I'm short. Call a consultation or use radium or smuggle me in some saws or something.'

"'Yank, says Doc Millikin, 'I 've a good notion to help you. There's only one government in the world that can get you out of this difficulty; and that's the Confederate States of America, the grandest nation that ever existed.'