Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/387

Rh "Just as you said to me I says to Doc: 'Why, the Confederacy ain't a nation. It 's been absolved forty years ago.' "'That 's a campaign lie,' says Doc. 'She 's running along as solid as the Roman Empire. She 's the only hope you've got. Now, you, being a Yank, have got to go through with some preliminary obsequies before you can get official aid. You 've got to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate government. Then I'll guarantee she does all she can for you. What do you say, Yank?—it 's your last chance.' "'If you 're fooling with me, Doc,' I answers, 'you 're no better than the United States. But as you say it 's the last chance, hurry up and swear me. I always did like corn whisky and possum anyhow. I believe I'm half Southerner by nature. I'm willing to try the Ku-Klux in place of the khaki. Get brisk.'

"Doc Millikin thinks awhile, and then he offers me this oath of allegiance to take without any kind of chaser:

"'I, Barnard O'Keefe, Yank, being of sound body but a Republican mind, do hereby swear to transfer my fealty, respect, and allegiance to the Confederate States of America, and the government thereof in consideration of said government, through its official acts and powers, obtaining my freedom and release from confinement and sentence of death brought about by the exuberance of my Irish proclivities and my general pizenness as a Yank.'

"I repeated these words after Doc, but they seemed to me a kind of hocus-pocus; and I don't believe any life-insurance company in the country would have issued me a policy on the strength of 'em.

"Doc went away, saying he would communicate with his government immediately.

"Say—you can imagine how I felt me—to be shot in two weeks and my only hope for help being in a government that 's been dead so long that it is n't even remembered except on