could. Well, sir, s'posin' just as you got three feet from the ground
Johnson's dog would grab you by the leg and hold on like a vise,
shaking you until you nearly lost your hold. And s'posin' Johnson was
to stand there and holloa, "Fix your eye on him, Briggs! Why don't you
manifest the power of the human intellect?" and so on, howling out
ironical remarks like those; and s'posin' he kept that dog on that leg
until he made you swear to pay the bet, and then at last had to pry
the dog off with a hot poker, bringing away at the same time some of
your flesh in the dog's mouth, so that you had to be carried home on
a stretcher, and to hire several doctors to keep you from dying with
lockjaw.

"S'posin' this, what I want to know is, couldn't you sue Johnson for
damages and make him pay heavily for what that dog did? That's what I
want to get at."

The colonel thought for a minute and then said, "Well, Mr. Briggs, I
don't think I could. If I agreed to let Johnson set the dog at me, I
should be a party to the transaction and I could not recover."

"Do you mean to say that the law won't make that infernal scoundrel
Johnson suffer for letting his dog eat me up?"

"I think not, if you state the case properly."

"It won't, hey?" exclaimed Mr. Briggs, hysterically. "Oh, very well,
very well! I s'pose if that dog had chewed me all up and spit me out
it'd've been all the same to this constitutional republic. But hang me
if I don't have satisfaction. I'll kill Johnson, poison his dog, and
emigrate to some country where the rights of citizens are protected.