As Virginia giggled with pleasure, Crockett turned back towards his steed, reached into his saddlebag, and extracted a large, oddly shaped bundle, crudely wrapped in brown paper and twine. Thrusting this object towards Sissy, he said: “This here’s a wedding present for you and Eddie.”

Squealing with excitement, Sissy quickly tore off the wrapping, then emitted a sharp gasp of astonishment as she found herself holding a medium-sized, taxidermically preserved member of the species Procyon lotor—more generally known as the common raccoon.

“I shot, skinned, and stuffed her myself,” proudly declared Crockett, who was wearing a hat that closely resembled our wedding gift. “Why, she’s as fine a varmint as any you’ll find in Mr. Peale’s museum.”

“Indeed,” I said, “it is a most handsome specimen.” Removing the creature from Sissy’s hands, which had begun to tremble slightly, I continued: “But to what circumstance do we owe the pleasure of this wholly unanticipated visit?”

“Why, I had to take care of some unfinished business in Washington City. So I reckoned I’d stop by and say howdy on my way back.”

“Did you receive the package I mailed you some weeks ago?”

“Yes sir, I did. I read over your story concerning that ol’ Asher house, too, and it war a humdinger—though I will say there are considerable many stretchers in it.”

“But that,” I replied, “is the very essence of the fictional prose tale. The skillful literary artist does not fashion his thoughts to accommodate his incidents, but having deliberately conceived a certain single effect to be wrought, he then invents such incidents, he then combines such events, and discusses them in such tone as may best serve him in establishing this preconceived effect”

For a moment, Davy merely stared at me in silence. Then, chuckling softly, he said: “I’ll be kicked to death by grasshoppers if I ain’t missed hearing that highfalutin palaver of yours, Eddie. Why don’t you come along with me?”

“Come along?” I said. “To where?”

“Why, to Texas,” he replied.

“Texas!” I exclaimed.

“Yes sir,” declared the frontiersman. “I have made up my mind to head out West and give the Texians a helping hand on the high road to freedom. Davy Crockett has always been fond of having his spoon in a mess of that kind—for if there is anything in the world that is worth living and dying for, it is freedom.”

A reverential silence had, by this point, descended upon Crockett’s juvenile audience, who gaped up at him with undisguised wonder as—hands on hips and chest thrust forward—he continued thusly: