LIARS
These Sandwichers believe in a superstition that the biggest liars in the
world have got to visit the Islands some time before they die. They believe
that because it is a fact—you misunderstand—I mean that
when liars get there they stay there. They have had several specimens they
boast of. They treasure up their little perfections, and they allude to them
as if the man was inspired—from below. They had a man among them
named Morgan. He never allowed anyone to tell a bigger lie than himself, and
he always told the last one too. When someone was telling about the natural
bridge in Virginia, he said he knew all about it, as his father helped to
build it. Someone was bragging of a wonderful horse he had. Morgan told them
of one he had once. While out riding one day a thunder shower came on and
chased him for eighteen miles, and never caught him. Not a single drop of
rain dropped onto his nose, but his dog was swimming behind the wagon the
whole of the way. Once, when the subject of mean men was being discussed,
Morgan told them of an incorporated company of mean men. They hired a poor
fellow to blast rock for them. He drilled a hole four feet deep, put in the
powder, and began to tamp it down around the fuse. I know all about tamping,
as I have worked in a mine myself. The crowbar struck a spark and caused a
premature explosion, and that man and his crowbar shot up into the air, and
he went higher and higher and higher till he didn't look bigger than a bee,
and then he went out of sight; and presently he came in sight again, looking
no bigger than a bee; and he came further and further and further till he
was as big as a dog, and further and further and further till he was as big
as a boy, and he came further and further till he assumed the full size and
shape of a man, and he came down and fell right into the same old spot and
went to tamping again. And would you believe it—concluded
Morgan—although that poor fellow was not gone more than fifteen
minutes, yet that mean company docked him for the loss of time.
