“Gimme the rags; I can do it myself. Don’t stop now; don’t fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!⁠—’deed we did. I wish we’d a had the handling of Louis XVI , there wouldn’t a been no ‘Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’ wrote down in his biography; no, sir, we’d a whooped him over the border ⁠—that’s what we’d a done with him ⁠—and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps⁠—man the sweeps!”

But me and Jim was consulting⁠—and thinking. And after we’d thought a minute, I says:

“Say it, Jim.”

So he says: