Here I paused briefly so as to emphasize my point. “On my part, however, I must first demand that you explain your characterization of me as a cricket, a creature only slightly removed in unsightliness from that most odious of pests, the domestic cockroach. Perhaps, as I suspect, you intended to say critic?”

My visitor’s brow wrinkled in evident befuddlement as I spoke. When I had finished, he puckered his lips and exhaled a soundless whistle.

“I’ll be hanged if you don’t sound like a gilt-edged, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering,” he said. “Just listenin’ to you spout off makes a feller’s brain feel as wrung out as yesterday’s laundry. As for me, I may not know all them highfalutin’ words, but I say what I mean. Call yerself a critic if you like, but to my way o’ thinkin’, you and your kind is nothin’ but a bunch o’ varminous crickets—useless little critters that ain’t got nothin’ better to do than pester other folks with a lot of bothersome noise.”

This insult, unendurable in itself, was rendered even more galling by the burst of hilarity it elicited from Crockett’s juvenile admirers. Indignation flared within my breast. I arose from my chair, stepped to the front of my writing table, and stationed myself directly before the audacious frontiersman. Standing in such close proximity to him, I was struck anew by the aura of raw physical power which seemed to emanate from his person like an effusion of eau de cologne. Drawing myself up to my full height, I addressed him thusly:

“Perhaps the contemplative surroundings in which you presently find me have created the impression of a nature unsuited to manly exertions. If so, you have badly misjudged me. I am the proud offshoot of a race long-steeped in military traditions. The Marquis de Lafayette himself paid public homage to the heroic service performed by my grandfather, General David Poe, in the cause of American freedom. As for myself, my records in the United States Army and the military academy at West Point stand as eloquent testimony to my mettle. While it is true that pugnacity is somewhat foreign to my temperament, I will not shun a fight when my honor is involved. Indeed, I may say of myself, as the Immortal Bard has the melancholy Dane say, that ‘though I am not splenetive and rash, yet have I something in me dangerous which let thy wisdom fear!’”