"Well, you know, Dear Mr. PUNCHINELLOW, this is how CHARLEY DANY and me
cum to hev our fallin' out. We was boys together, was CHARLEY and me,
and went to the same school. CHARLEY were a likely lad there; never
given to spilin' the faces of t'other boys nor splashin' mud on their
clothes. Oh! but hasn't he gone back on them good old times. I wouldn't
hev' believed it, CHARLEY, no I wouldn't.
But, as I was sayin', he were a likely lad; studyin' hard, and often
tellin' me how he would one day come out at the head of the heap,
gradooatin' before the Squire's son, JACK BALDERBACK. Just about this
time I was tuk with the measles, and father died, and SALLIE got
married, and the old woman said to me:
"EPHRAIM, I think your school days is ended." And so they was. I never
went back again, and never saw CHARLEY these thirty-five years gone now,
'till t'other day. I went West in search of a livin', and he tuk onto
business here East. Wons't in a long time I heerd on him; how things
went well with him, and how he got up, up, up, till the ladder wasn't
big enough and he couldn't climb no higher. Folks said he was into the
war; but I didn't believe 'em. CHARLEY was a peace man, I knowed that.
Arterwards, howsumever, it cum out that it was the War Office he was
into, and not the war; and says I to myself, "EPHRAIM," says I, "didn't
I tell you so; and tell them so, and war'nt I right? I calkilate they
won't go back no more on what I says about CHARLEY DANY."
Well, dear Mr. PUNCHINELLOW, I was one day readin' of your paper, and I
comes onto sumthin' about sumbody, which it was as I spell it, "CHARLES
A. DANA," how he was a cuttin' up shines, and how you was a pokin' fun
and hard things at him.