Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don’t plan out a love-tap; no, that isn’t my way; as long as I’m going to hit him at all, I’m going to hit him a lifter. And I don’t jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him gradually, so that he never suspects that I’m going to hit him at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he’s flat on his back, and he can’t tell for the life of him how it all happened.

That is the way I went for brother Dowley. I started to talking lazy and comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and the oldest man in the world couldn’t have taken the bearings of my starting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up: