Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt--wouldn't _you_ have struck below the belt to get even?
Yes, you would; it is simply human nature.
Well, that is what I did.

I am not trying to justify it; I'm only saying that I was mad, and _anybody_ would have done it.
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: "Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it; yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too.