David Harum // A Story of American Life — Edward Noyes Westcott

" ...]be a deakin an' all that, an' he lied to me so splendid that I was took in, clean over my head, he done me so brown I was burnt in places, an' you c'd smell smoke 'round me fer some time." "Was it a horse?" asked Mrs. Bixbee gratuitously. "Wa'al," David replied, "mebbe it had ben some time, but at that partic'lar time the only thing to determine that fact was that it wa'n't nothin' else." "Wa'al, I declare " exclaimed Mrs. Bixbee, wondering not more at the deacon's turpitude than at the lapse in David's acuteness, of which she had an immense ...]."