So back we went to find the chief,—Tiffin, I called him,—and I hailed him till he came out from his hut where he'd been palaverin' with his chief cook.
"Tiffin," says I, "great Chief of the Tappyappies" (for these benighted heathen likes titles, and has no idee of the glorious offhand ways of a republic like ours), "you 're goin' to give a noble eatin'-match?"
"True, Moonface," says he; for that's the name I went by, though I was more like a beet in the face than like the moon.
"I s'pose you want things to go off in tip-top style?" I went on as easy as you please.
"You know well, Moonface," says he, his complexion gettin' a shade darker, "that my brother, the chief of the—er—er—Succotash Islands" (that's where my memory's not what it should be—I don't rightly remember the Jography name) "is to dine with me, and he has far and away the champion cook o' these parts. Three wars have we fit over that there cook."
"I don't recall mentionin' the fact previously," I remarks, "but Snowball here—he's the boss medicine-man over a galley-stove that I ever saw" (that's the sense of what I said)—"in fact, he's the chief cook and first-chop bottle-washer of your pale brothers!"
"Well, well!" says the chief, after a spell, and lookin' at Snowball with int'rest. "You do surprise me."
"Yes, sirree!" I went on, slapping the cook on the shoulder, and 'most keelin' him over. "But to tell you the plain facts o' the case, his heart pants for the land of his people." (These savages delight in poitry talk, and I had picked it up along with their lingo.) "His neck is stretched with gazin' to-wards the land o' the free and the home o' the brave!"
O' course he never knew the words was a quotation from a popular ballad, and it moved him—it came so sudden. Still, he
