Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1883 — IT DIDN'T HIT. [ARTICLE]

IT DIDN'T HIT.

There was a ohap on the bock who lived at Jackson, Miss., and he was telling os many anecdotes regarding the negro population. Among others, he had a friend who one day asked of an aged darkey: “Well Colonel, what particular ossification has predominated over the ramification of late?” The old man gave a pull at his hat with one hand, and scratched his head with the other, and answered: “Wall, Bah, I reckons dat was him gwine down de road a few minits ago on top of a mewl!" There was a passenger from Rhodb Island who was greatly amnsed by these anecdotes, and two or three times afterward I caught him hunting in a dictionary for big words and stringing them together. When we arrived at Natchez he was all loaded up. A lot of us went up to see the town, and as we gained the crest of the long and dusty hill we met a colored woman on her way down. Here was the chance the smart aleck had been waiting for, and he halted her and demanded: “Madam, have you systemized the disability of the precocious influenza this morning?” He was bowing and smiling, and she looked thunder-struok. After a minute she asked: “What’s dat you remark?” “I percolated the interrogations as to whether you had ambuscaded the giganlic verbosity,” hd continued. “No, sah, I hasn’t,” she said as she removed the basket from her head, “but Ize gwine to right away !” With that she brought him a clip with her hand on the ear, and followed it up by a bunt in the back that sprawled him into the dust and left him gasping like a fish. A “If de verboshity wants enny mo’ he canfollerme down to de levee!” she remarked as she walked off; but he didn’t. He was dust from head to foot, his humorous nature had evaporated, and he got back to the boat to keep his berth for the next eight hours. The negro is an odd coon at times, but there are other times when the “gigantic verbosity” doesn ? t hit his funny-bone within a rod.—ls. Quad.