One time there was a fellow got himself elected to the legislature at Little Rock. Some say he was a Yankee that sneaked in by mistake, but maybe he was just crazy, or else somebody put him up to it. Anyhow, he kept saying that the name of the Bear State is spelled with an s on the end of it, so why don't we pronounce it to rhyme with Kansas? The folks thought he was just fooling at first, but finally he got up and introduced a bill to make it legal. In one minute every man was on his feet, hollering loud as they could. The Speaker was pounding like a blacksmith, and lawmakers was a-cussing all over the place. There was several men tried to make speeches, but the folks didn't pay no attention. Most of them was so mad they couldn't talk, anyhow. But one gentleman had a voice like a steamboat whistle. "Mister Speaker! Mister Speaker!" he yelled, and the girls could hear him clear up to the Capital Hotel. And so things finally got quiet enough to hear what the old gentleman had to say,
"Mister Speaker, these are times that try men's souls, and every time I try to get the floor you wriggle around like a dog with a flea in his rectum! Change the name of Arkansas? Great God Almighty damn! I'm Senator Cassius M. Johnson from Johnson county, gentlemen. I was born in a log cabin, rocked in a gum cradle, cut my teeth on a six-shooter, and killed three Republicans before I was seven years old. Suckled by a wolf with four rows of tits, and holes punched for more! I got steel hoofs, cast-iron kidneys, and fourteen ribs to a side. Change the name of Arkansas? Hell's fire, no! I can slide down a honey-locust backwards with a wildcat in each hand, and never get a goddam scratch. Blood's my natural drink, and the groans of the dying is music to my ears. Stand back and give me room! Let each man pile his dead according to his taste. You might massacre me, gentlemen, but you can't change the name of the State of Arkansas!
"Down in Johnson county, gentlemen, men are still men and women are glad of it. Change the name of Arkansas? Great God Almighty damn! At fourteen years of age I was swinging a corncob thirteen inches long, the pride and joy of the whole settlement. Change the name of Arkansas? Not while I can stand! My pants was made of rawhide with hair on, and I could fling water halfway across the Ouachita!"
Some people began to holler, "Out of order! Out of order!" and the Speaker was a-hollering, too, but Senator Johnson went right ahead.
"Of course it was out of order," says he, "or else I'd have throwed water clear across the river! What the hell are these people talking about? Change the name of Arkansas? Hell and damnation, no! Would you liken the fair state of Arkansas to that miserable patch of gopher dung that Yankees call Kansas? Would you compare the light of the noonday sun in all its glory to the feeble glimmer of a lightning-bug's hind end? You can holler till the cows come home with bulls on their backs, and then rub your nose in it. But you can't change the name of Arkansas!
"You may foul the most hallowed sanctums of this great republic, gentlemen. You may empty your stinking entrails on Thomas Jefferson's grave, and use the Constitution of the United States for bumfodder. But change the name of Arkansas? Great God Almighty damn! You may rape the Goddess of Liberty in broad daylight, and wipe your unholy member with the Declaration of Independence. But you can't change the name of Arkansas! Tear the stars out of the sky, if you feel like doing something. Soak the sky in a chamber-pot! Loosen the belly-band of Time, and turn the sun and moon out to pasture! But change the name of Arkansas? Hell's fire, no! Not while a single patriot lives to prevent such desecration!"
The story don't say just what happened after Senator Johnson finished his great speech. There was a lot of whooping and hollering, of course, and people running up to shake hands with him. That night he give the speech again down at the hotel, so the boys in the back room could hear it. From then on the old gentleman just kind of visited around the saloons and whorehouses where somebody would buy the drinks, and they always wanted to hear him tell how he saved the name of Arkansas. There was several other boys that used to give the speech, too, especially Charley Osborne that put on false whiskers so he looked just like Senator Johnson. Also a fellow at the Elks Club was pretty good at it, and then regular play-actors was doing the same thing all over the country.
After while the whole thing got to be kind of a joke. Lots of the people that heard the speech thought it was just something them saloon men had made up. They did not believe a Senator ever said anything like that in the legislature. But the home folks didn't see nothing unreasonable about it. They knowed that the best speeches in the world is made by politicians, And any Senator in Arkansas can make just as good a speech as them trout-mouthed congressmen they got up North.