True Grit

by Charles Portis

He had mistaken the drummers for men. “The wicked flee when none pursueth.”

I have since learned that Judge Isaac Parker watched all his hangings from an upper window in the Courthouse. I suppose he did this from a sense of duty. There is no knowing what is in a man’s heart.

Some people will take it wrong and criticize me for not going to my father’s funeral. My answer is this: I had my father’s business to attend

I did not like the looks of that, nor did I care much for the “smarty” manner of the deputy. He was puffed up by his office. You can expect that out of Federal people and to make it worse this was a Republican gang that cared nothing for the opinion of the good people of Arkansas who are Democrats.

I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious “claptrap.” My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8: 26-33.

Nature tells us to rest after meals and people who are too busy to heed that inner voice are often dead at the age of fifty years.

You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

On his deathbed he asked for a priest and became a Catholic. That was his wife’s religion. It was his own business and none of mine. If you had sentenced one hundred and sixty men to death and seen around eighty of them swing, then maybe at the last minute you would feel the need of some stronger medicine than the Methodists could make.

Papa used to say that the only friends we had down here right after the war were the Irish Democrats in New York. Thad Stevens and the Republican gang would have starved us all out if they could. It is all in the history books.

“I misled you there, Quincy. When was the last time you seen your old pard Ned Pepper?” “Ned Pepper?” said the stock thief. “I don’t know him. Who is he?” “I think you know him,” said Rooster. “I know you have heard of him. Everybody has heard of him.” “I never heard of him.” “He used to work for Mr. Burlingame. Didn’t you work for him a while?”

You go for a man hard enough and fast enough and he don’t have time to think about how many is with him, he thinks about himself and how he may get clear out of the wrath that is about to set down on him.”

I think Smallwood was a gentleman but gentlemen are only human and their memories can sometimes fail them. Business is business.

But I had not the strength nor the inclination to bandy words with a drunkard. What have you done when you have bested a fool?

The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.