"
Aaron Pennington, the strong man just mentioned, was, in his younger
days, a river pilot. Billy Hite, a mite of a man, was clerk. They had a
disagreement, when Aaron told Billy that if he caught him on "the harrican
deck," he would pitch him overboard. The next day Billy appeared whilst
Aaron, off duty, was strolling up and down outside the pilot-house, and
strolled offensively in his wake. Never a hostile glance or a word from
Aaron. At last, tired of dumb show, Billy broke forth with a torrent of
imprecation closing with "When are you going to pitch me off the boat, you
blankety-blank son-of-a-gun and coward?"
Aaron Pennington was a brave man. He was both fearless and self-possessed.
He paused, gazed quizzically at his little tormentor, and says he: "Billy,
you got a pistol, and you want to get a pretext to shoot me, and I ain't
going to give it to you."
II
Among the hostels of Christendom the Galt House, of Louisville, for a long
time occupied a foremost place and held its own. It was burned to the
ground fifty years ago and a new Galt House was erected, not upon the
original site, but upon the same street, a block above, and, although one
of the most imposing buildings in the world, it could never be made to
thrive. It stands now a rather useless encumbrance--a whited sepulchre--a
marble memorial of the Solid South and the Kentucky that was, on whose
portal might truthfully appear the legend:
"_A jolly place it was in days of old,
But something ails it now_"
Aris Throckmorton, its manager in the Thirties, the Forties and the
Fifties, was a personality and a personage.
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