Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories.

by Cal Stewart.

Preface

To the Reader.

The one particular object in writing this book is to furnish you with an occasional laugh, and the writer with an occasional dollar. If you get the laugh you have your equivalent, and the writer has his.

In Uncle Josh Weathersby you have a purely imaginary character, yet one true to life. A character chuck full of sunshine and rural simplicity.

Take him as you find him, and in his experiences you will observe there is a bright side to everything.

Sincerely Yours

Cal Stewart

Life Sketch of Author

THE author was born in Virginia, on a little patch of land, so poor we had to fertilize it to make brick. Our family, while having cast their fortunes with the South, was not a family ruined by the war; we did not have anything when the war commenced, and so we held our own. I secured a common school education, and at the age of twelve I left home, or rather home left me--things just petered out. I was slush cook on an Ohio River Packet; check clerk in a stave and heading camp in the k.n.o.bs of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia; I helped lay the track of the M.

K. & T. R. R., and was chambermaid in a livery stable. Made my first appearance on the stage at the National Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, and have since then chopped cord wood, worked in a coal mine, made cross ties (and walked them), worked on a farm, taught a district school (made love to the big girls), run a threshing machine, cut bands, fed the machine and ran the engine. Have been a freight and pa.s.senger brakeman, fired and ran a locomotive; also a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque and dramatic productions; have been with good shows, bad shows, medicine shows, and worse, and some shows where we had landlords singing in the chorus. Have played variety houses and vaudeville houses; have slept in a box car one night, and a swell hotel the next; have been a traveling salesman (could spin as many yarns as any of them). For the past four years have made the Uncle Josh stories for the talking machine. The Lord only knows what next!

My Old Yaller Almanac

Hangin' on the Kitchen Wall

I'M sort of fond of readin' one thing and another,

So I've read promiscus like whatever c.u.m my way,

And many a friendly argument's c.u.m up 'tween me and mother,

'Bout things that I'd be readin' settin' round a rainy day.

Sometimes it jist seemed to me thar wa'nt no end of books,

Some made fer useful readin' and some jist made fer looks;

But of all the different books I've read, thar's none comes up at all

To My Old Yaller Almanac, Hangin' on the Kitchen Wall.

I've always liked amus.e.m.e.nt, of the good and wholesome kind,

It's better than a doctor, and it elevates the mind;

So, often of an evening, when the farm ch.o.r.es all were done,

I'd join the games the boys would play, gosh how I liked the fun;

And once thar wuz a minstrel troop, they showed at our Town Hall,

A jolly lot of fellers, 'bout twenty of 'em all.

Wall I went down to see 'em, but their jokes, I knowed 'em all,

Read 'em in My Old Yaller Almanac, Hangin' on the Kitchen Wall.

Thar wuz Ezra Hoskins, Deacon Brown and a lot of us old codgers,

Used to meet down at the grocery store, what wuz kept by Jason Rogers.

There we'd set and argufy most every market day,

Chawin' tobacker and whittlin' sticks to pa.s.s the time away;

And many a knotty problem has put us on our mettle,

Which we felt it wuz our duty to duly solve and settle;

Then after they had said their say, who thought they knowed it all,

I'd floor 'em with some facts I'd got

From My Old Yaller Almanac, Hangin' on the Kitchen Wall.

It beats a regular cyclopedium, that old fashioned yeller book,

And many a pleasant hour in readin' it I've took;

Somehow I've never tired of lookin' through its pages,

Seein' of the different things that's happened in all ages.

One time I wuz elected a Justice of the Peace,

To make out legal doc.u.ments, a mortgage or a lease,

Them tricks that lawyers have, you bet I knowed them all,

Learned them in My Old Yaller Almanac, Hangin' on the Kitchen Wall.