He wrote some of the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work with distinguished ease and fluency.

His name has passed out of my memory.
A couple of years went by; then the original story--my own version--cropped up again and went floating around in the spelling, and with my name to it.

Soon first one paper and then another fell upon me rigorously for "stealing" Jim Wolf and the Cats from the Tennessee man.
I got a merciless beating, but I did not mind it.

It's all in the game.
Besides, I had learned, a good while before that, that it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive.

Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.
[Sidenote: (1873.)] [Sidenote: (1900.)] But I was not done with Jim and the Cats yet.