Читать книгу: «The Humors of Falconbridge», страница 5

People Do Differ!

Fifty years ago, Uncle Sam was almost a stranger on the maps; he hadn't a friend in the world, apparently, while he had more enemies than he could shake a stick at. Every body snubbed him, and every body wanted to lick him. But Sam has now grown to be a crowder; his spunk, too, goes up with his resources, and he don't wait for any body to "knock the chip off his hat," but goes right smack up to a crowd of fighting bullies, and rolling up his sleeves, he coolly "wants to know" if any body had any thing to say about him, in that crowd! Uncle Sam is no longer "a baby," his physique has grown to be quite enormous, and we rather expect the old fellow will have to have a pitched battle with some body soon, or he'll spile!

Bill Whiffletree's Dental Experience

Have you ever had the tooth-ache? If not, then blessed is your ignorance, for it is indeed bliss to know nothing about the tooth-ache, as you know nothing, absolutely nothing about pain – the acute, double-distilled, rectified agony that lurks about the roots or fangs of a treacherous tooth. But ask a sufferer how it feels, what it is like, how it operates, and you may learn something theoretically which you may pray heaven that you may not know practically.

But there's poor William Whiffletree – he's been through the mill, fought, bled, and died (slightly) with the refined, essential oil of the agony caused by a raging tooth. Every time we read Othello, we are half inclined to think that more than half of Iago's devilishness came from that "raging tooth," which would not let him sleep, but tortured and tormented "mine ancient" so that he became embittered against all the world, and blackamoors in particular.

William Whiffletree's case is a very strong illustration of what tooth-ache is, and what it causes people to do; and affords a pretty fair idea of the manner in which the tooth and sufferer are medicinally and morally treated by the materia medica, and friends at large.

William Whiffletree – or "Bill," as most people called him – was a sturdy young fellow of two-and-twenty, of "poor but respectable parents," and 'tended the dry-goods store of one Ethan Rakestraw, in the village of Rockbottom, State of New York.

One unfortunate day, for poor Bill, there came to Rockbottom a galvanized-looking individual, rejoicing in the euphonium of Dr. Hannibal Orestes Wangbanger. As a surgeon, he had – according to the album-full of certificates– operated in all the scientific branches of amputation, from the scalp-lock to the heel-tap, upon Emperors, Kings, Queens, and common folks; but upon his science in the dental way, he spread and grew luminous! In short, Dr. Wangbanger had not been long in Rockbottom before his "gift of gab," and unadulterated propensity to elongate the blanket, set every body, including poor Bill Whiffletree, in a furor to have their teeth cut, filed, scraped, rasped, reset, dug out, and burnished up!

Now Bill, being, as we aforestated, a muscularly-developed youth, got up in the most sturdy New Hampshire style, his teeth were teeth, in every way calculated to perform long and strong; but Bill was fast imbibing counter-jumper notions, dabbling in stiff dickeys, greased soap-locks, and other fancy "flab-dabs," supposed to be essential in cutting a swarth among ye fair sex.

So that when Dr. Wangbanger once had an audience with Mr. William Whiffletree in regard to one of Mr. Whiffletree's molars which Bill thought had a "speck" on it, he soon convinced the victim that the said molar not only was specked, but out of the dead plumb of its nearest neighbor at least the 84th part of an inch!

"O, shocking!" says the remorseless hum; "it is well I saw it in time, Mr. Whiffletree. Why, in the course of a few weeks, that tooth, sir, would have exfoliated, calcareous supperation would have ensued, the gum would have ossified, while the nerve of the tooth becoming apostrophized, the roots would have concatenated in their hiatuses, and the jaw-bone, no longer acting upon their fossil exoduses, would necessarily have led to the entire suspension of the capillary organs of your stomach and brain, and —death would supervene in two hours!"

Poor Bill! he scarcely knew what fainting was, but a queer sensation settled in his "ossis frontis," while his ossis legso almost bent double under him, at the awful prospect of things before him! He took a long breath, however, and in a voice tremulous with emotion, inquired —

"Good Lord, Doctor! what's to be done for a feller?"

"Plug and file," calmly said the Doctor.

"Plug and file what?"

"The second molar," said the Doctor; though the treacherous monster meant Bill's wallet, of course!

"What'll it cost, Doctor?" says Bill.

"Done in my very best manner, upon the new and splendid system invented by myself, sir, and practiced upon all the crowned heads of Europe, London, and Washington City, it will cost you three dollars."

"Does it hurt much, Doctor?" was Bill's cautious inquiry.

"Very little, indeed; it's sometimes rather agreeable, sir, than otherwise," said the Doctor.

"Then go at it, Doctor! Here's the dosh," and forking over three dollars, down sits William Whiffletree in a high-backed chair, and the Doctor's assistant – a sturdy young Irishman – clamping Bill's head to the back of the chair, to keep it steady, as the Doctor remarked, the latter began to "bore and file."

"O! ah! ho-ho-hold on, hold on!" cries Bill, at the first gouge the Doctor gave the huge tooth.

"O! be me soul! be aizy, zur," says the Irishman, "it's mesilf as untherstands it —I'll howld on till yees!"

"O – O-h-h-h!" roars Bill, as the Doctor proceeds.

"Be quiet, sir; the pain won't signify!" says the Doctor.

"Go-goo-good Lord-d-d! Ho-ho-hol-hold on!"

"O, yeez needn't be afeared of that – I'm howldin' yeez tight as a divil!" cries Paddy, and sure enough he was holding, for in vain Bill screwed and twisted and squirmed around; Pat held him like a cider-press.

"Let me – me – O – O – O! Everlasting creation! let me go-o-o – stop, hold on-n-n!" as the Doctor bored, screwed, and plugged away at the tooth.

"All done, sir; let the patient up, Michael," says the Doctor, with a confident twirl of his perfumed handkerchief. "There, sir – there was science, art, elegance, and dispatch! Now, sir, your tooth is safe – your life is safe —you're a sound man!"

"Sound?" echoes poor Bill, "sound? Why, you've broken my jaw into flinders; you've set all my teeth on edge; and I've no more feelin' – gall darn ye! – in my jaws, than if they were iron steel-traps! You've got the wuth of your money out of my mouth, and I'm off!"

That night was one of anxiety and misery to William Whiffletree. The disturbed molar growled and twitched like mad; and, by daylight, poor Bill's cheek was swollen up equal to a printer's buff-ball, his mouth puckered, and his right eye half "bunged up."

"Why, William," says Ethan Rakestraw, as Bill went into the store, "what in grace ails thy face? Thee looks like an owl in an ivy-bush!"

"Been plugged and filed," says Bill, looking cross as a meat-axe at his snickering Orthodox boss.

"Plugged and fined? Thee hain't been fighting, William?"

"Fined? No, I ain't been fined or fighting, Mr. Rakestraw, but I bet I do fight that feller who gave me the tooth-ache! – O! O!" moaned poor Bill, as he clamped his swollen jaw with his hand, and went around waving his head like a plaster-of-paris mandarin.

"O! thee's been to the dentist, eh? Got the tooth-ache? Go thee to my wife; she'll cure thee in one minute, William; a little laudanum and cotton will soon ease thy pain."

Mrs. Rakestraw applied the laudanum to Bill's molar, but as it did no kind of good, old grandmother proposed a poultice; and soon poor Bill's head and cheek were done up in mush, while he groaned and grunted and started for the store, every body gaping at his swollen countenance as though he was a rare curiosity.

"Halloo, Bill!" says old Firelock, the gunsmith, as Bill was going by his shop; "got a bag in your calabash, or got the tooth-ache?"

Bill looked daggers at old Firelock, and by a nod of his head intimated the cause of his distress.

"O, that all? Come in; I'll stop it in a minute and a half; sit down, I'll fix it – I've cured hundreds," says Firelock.

"What are you – O-h-h, dear! what are you going to do?" says Bill, eyeing the wire, and lamp in which Firelock was heating the wire.

"Burn out the marrow of the tooth – 'twill never trouble you again – I've cured hundreds that way! Don't be afeared – you won't feel it but a moment. Sit still, keep cool!" says Firelock.

"Cool?" with a hot wire in his tooth! But Bill, being already intensely crucified, and assured of Firelock's skill, took his head out of the mush-plaster, opened his jaws, and Firelock, admonishing him to "keep cool," crowded the hot, sizzling wire on to the tin foil jammed into the hollow by Wangbanger, and gave it a twist clear through the melted tin to the exposed nerve. Bill jumped, bit off the wire, burnt his tongue, and knocked Firelock nearly through the partition of his shop; and so frightened Monsieur Savon, the little barber next door, that he rushed out into the street, crying —

"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Ze zundair strike my shop!"

Bill was stone dead – Firelock crippled. The apothecary over the way came in, picked up poor Bill, applied some camphor to his nose, and brought him back to life, and – the pangs of tooth-ache!

"Kreasote!" says Squills, the 'pothecary. "I'll ease your pain, Mr. Whiffletree, in a second!"

Poor Bill gave up – the kreasote added a fresh invoice to his misery – burnt his already lacerated and roasted tongue – and he yelled right out.

"Death and glory! O-h-h-h-h, murder! You've pizened me!"

"Put a hot brick to that young man's face," said a stranger; "'twill take out the pain and swelling in three minutes!"

Bill revived; he seemed pleased at the stranger's suggestion; the Brick was applied; but Bill's cheek being now half raw with the various messes, it made him yell when the brick touched him!

He cleared for home, went to bed, and the excessive pain, finally, with laudanum, kreasote, fire, and hot bricks, put him to sleep.

He awoke at midnight, in a frightful state of misery; walked the floor until daylight; was tempted two or three times to jump out the window or crawl up the chimney!

Until noon next day he suffered, trying in vain, every ten minutes, some "known cure," oils, acids, steam, poultices, and the ten thousand applications usually tried to cure a raging tooth.

Desperation made Bill revengeful. He got a club and went after Dr. Wangbanger, who had set all the village in a rage of tooth-ache. Ten or a dozen of his victims were at his door, awaiting ferociously their turns to be revenged.

But the bird had flown; the teuth-doctor had sloped; yet a good Samaritan came to poor Bill, and whispering in his ear, Bill started for Monsieur Savon's barber-shop, took a seat, shut his eyes, and said his prayers. The little Frenchman took a keen knife and pair of pincers, and Bill giving one awful yell, the tooth was out, and his pains and perils at an end!

A-a-a-in't they Thick?

During the "great excitement" in Boston, relative to the fugitive slave "fizzle," a good-natured country gentleman, by the name of Abner Phipps; an humble artisan in the fashioning of buckets, wash-tubs and wooden-ware generally, from one of the remote towns of the good old Bay State, paid his annual visit to the metropolis of Yankee land. In the multifarious operations of his shop and business, Abner had but little time, and as little inclination, to keep the run of latest news, as set forth glaringly, every day, under the caption of Telegraphic Dispatches, in the papers; hence, it requires but a slight extension of the imagination to apprise you, "dear reader," that our friend Phipps was but meagerly "posted up" in what was going on in this great country, half of his time. I must do friend Phipps the favor to say, that he was not ignorant of the fact that "Old Hickory" fout well down to New Orleans, and that "Old Zack" flaxed the Mexicans clean out of their boots in Mexico; likewise that Millerism was a humbug, and money was pretty generally considered a cash article all over the universal world.

But what did Phipps know or care about the Fugitive Slave bill? Not a red cent's worth, no more than he did of the equitation of the earth, the Wilmot proviso, or Barnum's woolly horse – not a red. He came to Boston annually to see how things were a workin'; pleasure, not business. The very first morning of his arrival in town, the hue and cry of "slave hunters," was raised – Shadrack, the fugitive, was arrested at his vocation – table servant at Taft's eating establishment, Corn Hill, where Abner Phipps accidentally had stuck his boots under the mahogany, for the purpose of recuperating his somewhat exhausted inner-man. Abner saw the arrest, he was quietly discussing his tapioca, and if thinking at all, was merely calculating what the profits were, upon a two-and-sixpence dinner, at a Boston restaurateur. He saw there was a muss between the black waiter and two red-nosed white men, but as he did not know what it was all about, he didn't care; it was none of his business; and being a part of his religion, not to meddle with that that did not concern him, he continued his tapioca to the bottom of his plate, then forked over the equivalent and stepped out.

As Phipps turned into Court square, it occurred, slightly, that the niggers had got to be rather thick in Boston, to what they used to be; and bending his footsteps down Brattle street, once or twice it occurred to him that the niggers had got to be thick – darn'd thick, for they passed and repassed him – walked before him and behind him, and in fact all around him.

"Yes," says Phipps, "the niggers are thick, thundering thick – never saw 'em so thick in my life. Ain't they thick?" he soliloquized, and as he continued his stroll in the purlieus of "slightly soiled" garments, vulgarly known as second-hand shops, mostly proprietorized by very dignified and respectable col'ud pussons, it again struck Phipps quite forcibly that the niggers were a getting thick.

"Godfree! but ain't they thick! I hope to be stabbed with a gridiron," said Phipps, "if there ain't more niggers– look at 'em – more niggers than would patch and grade the infernal regions eleven miles! Guess I've enough niggers for a spell," continued Phipps, "so I'll just pop in here, and see how this feller sells his notions." And so Abner, having reached Dock square, saunters into a gun, pistol, bowie, jack-knife, dog-collar, shot-bag, and notion-shop in general. Unlucky step.

The stiff-dickied, frizzle-headed, polished and perfumed shop-keeper was on hand, and particularly predisposed to sell the stranger something. Just then a nigger passed the door, and looked in very sharply at Phipps, and presently two more passed, then a fourth and fifth, all looking more or less pointedly at the manufacturer of wooden doin's, and white-pine fixin's.

"That's a neat collar," says the shop-keeper, as Phipps, sort of miscellaneously, placed his hand upon a brass-band, red-lined dog-collar.

"Collar! don't call that a collar, do you?"

"I do, sir, a beautiful collar, sir."

"What for, solgers?" asks Phipps.

"Soldiers, no, dogs," says the shop-keeper, puckering his mouth as though he had sampled a lemon.

"O!" says Phipps, suddenly realizing the fact. "I ain't got no dogs; bad stock; don't pay; tax 'em up where I live; wouldn't pay tax for forty dogs." More niggers passed, repassed, and looked in at Phipps and the storekeeper.

"I say, ain't the niggers got to be thick – infernal thick, in your town lately?"

"Well, I don't know that they are," replied the shop-keeper; "getting rather scarce, I think, since the Fugitive bill has been put in force over the country, sir, but it does appear to me," said the shop-keeper, twiging sundry and suspicious-looking col'ud gem'en passing by his store, gaping in rather wistfully at the door, and peeping through the sash of the windows – "it does appear to me, that a good many colored persons are about this morning; yes, there is, why there goes more, more yet; bless me, there's another, two, three, four, why a dozen has just passed; they seem to look in here rather curiously, I wonder – only look; what has stirred them up, I want to know!" the fluctuation of the Congo market completely attracted the handsome man's attention; his surprise finally assumed the most tangible shape and complexion of fear, for the niggers, one and all, looked savage as meat-axes, and began to get too numerous to mention.

"Well, guess I'll be goin'," says Phipps, after fumbling over some of the shooting-irons, jack-knives, etc.; reaching the street, he was more fully impressed with the fixed fact, that the niggers were all sorts of thick. They fairly crowded him; one buck darkey rubbed slap up against Phipps, as he moved out of the store. "Look here, Mister," says Phipps, "ain't all this street big enough for you without a crowdin' me?"

The nigger stopped, looked arsenic and chain lightning at Phipps, and then moved off, saying in a sort of undertone —

"Gorra, I guess you'll be crowded a wus'n dat afore dis day is ober."

"Will, eh?" responded Abner Phipps, slightly mystified as to the why and wherefore, that he should, in particular, be "crowded," especially by an Ethiopic gentleman.

"I guess I won't then," resumed Phipps; "if any body ventures to crowd me, just a purpose, I guess I'll be darn'd apt, and mighty quick to squash in their heads, or whoop'm on the spot."

"What dat? got pistils in your pocket, eh?" says one of the two big buck niggers, shying up alongside of the now velocipeding up-country artisan. Phipps looked back, the negroes were following him. "Pistils? who's talkin' about pistils, mister?" he ventured to ask.

"Dat's him, watch'm."

"Why, we see'd you goin' in dar, dat pistol shop; want to lay in a stock of dirks and pistils, eh?" says the negro.

"You – you got any hand-cuffs in you' pocket?" inquired another.

"What dat? got de hand-cuffs in he pocket?"

"Pistils and bowie knibes!" says a third.

"Dat's him! watch'm!"

"Knock'm down, put dat white hat ober his eyes! Hoo-r-r!"

The negroes now fairly beset our victimized friend Phipps; he stopped, buttoned his coat, the negroes augmented; glared at him like demons; he fixed his hat firmly upon his head; the negroes began to grin and move upon him; he spat upon his hands; the negroes began to yell, and to close in upon him; with one grand effort, one mighty gathering of all the human faculties called into action by fear and desperation, Phipps bounded like a Louisiana bull at a gate post; he knocked down two, square; kicked over four, and rushing through the now very considerable and formidable array of ebony, he broke equal to a wild turkey through a corn bottom, or a sharp knife through a pound of milky butter; and it is very questionable whether Phipps ever stopped running until his boots busted, or he reached his bucket factory on Taunton river. His negro deputation waited on him with a rush clear outside of town, where the speed and bottom of Abner distanced the entire committee. The key to this joke is: Phipps was dogged from Tafts' – by the "vigilant committee," as an informer, or slave-hunter at least, and hence the delicate attentions of the col'ud pop'lation paid him. I have no doubt, that if Abner Phipps be asked, how things look around Boston, he would observe with some energy,

"Niggers – niggers are thick – Godfree! a-a-a-in't they thick!"

A Desperate Race

Some years ago, I was one of a convivial party, that met in the principal hotel in the town of Columbus, Ohio, the seat of government of the Buckeye State.

It was a winter evening when all without was bleak and stormy, and all within were blythe and gay; when song and story made the circuit of the festive board, filling up the chasms of life with mirth and laughter.

We had met for the express purpose of making a night of it, and the pious intention was duly and most religiously carried out. The Legislature was in session in that town, and not a few of the worthy legislators were present upon this occasion.

One of these worthies I will name, as he not only took a big swath in the evening's entertainment, but he was a man more generally known than our worthy President, James K. Polk. That man was the famous Captain Riley! whose "narrative" of suffering and adventures is pretty generally known, all over the civilized world. Captain Riley was a fine, fat, good-humored joker, who at the period of my story was the representative of the Dayton district, and lived near that little city when at home. Well, Captain Riley had amused the company with many of his far-famed and singular adventures, which being mostly told before and read by millions of people, that have ever seen his book, I will not attempt to repeat them.

Many were the stories and adventures told by the company, when it came to the turn of a well known gentleman who represented the Cincinnati district. As Mr. – is yet among the living, and perhaps not disposed to be the subject of joke or story, I do not feel at liberty to give his name. Mr. – was a slow believer of other men's adventures, and at the same time much disposed to magnify himself into a marvellous hero whenever the opportunity offered. As Captain Riley wound up one of his truthful, though really marvellous adventures, Mr. – coolly remarked, that the captain's story was all very well, but it did not begin to compare with an adventure that he had "once upon a time" on the Ohio, below the present city of Cincinnati.

"Let's have it!" "Let's have it!" resounded from all hands.

"Well, gentlemen," said the Senator, clearing his voice for action and knocking the ashes from his cigar against the arm of his chair. "Gentlemen, I am not in the habit of spinning yarns of marvellous or fictitious matters; and therefore it is scarcely necessary to affirm upon the responsibility of my reputation, gentlemen, that what I am about to tell you, I most solemnly proclaim to be truth, and – "

"Oh! never mind that, go on, Mr. – ," chimed the party.

"Well, gentlemen, in 18 – I came down the Ohio river, and settled at Losanti, now called Cincinnati. It was, at that time, but a little settlement of some twenty or thirty log and frame cabins, and where now stands the Broadway Hotel and blocks of stores and dwelling houses, was the cottage and corn patch of old Mr. – , a tailor, who, by the by, bought that land for the making of a coat for one of the settlers. Well, I put up my cabin, with the aid of my neighbors, and put in a patch of corn and potatoes, about where the Fly Market now stands, and set about improving my lot, house, &c.

"Occasionally, I took up my rifle, and started off with my dog down the river, to look up a little deer, or bar meat, then very plenty along the river. The blasted red skins were lurking about, and hovering around the settlement, and every once in a while picked off some of our neighbors, or stole our cattle or horses. I hated the red demons, and made no bones of peppering the blasted sarpents whenever I got a sight at them. In fact, the red rascals had a dread of me, and had laid a great many traps to get my scalp, but I wasn't to be catch'd napping. No, no, gentlemen, I was too well up to 'em for that.

"Well, I started off one morning, pretty early, to take a hunt, and travelled a long way down the river, over the bottoms and hills, but couldn't find no bar nor deer. About four o'clock in the afternoon, I made tracks for the settlement again. By and by, I sees a buck just ahead of me, walking leisurely down the river. I slipped up, with my faithful old dog close in my rear, to within clever shooting distance, and just as the buck stuck his nose in the drink, I drew a bead upon his top-knot and over he tumbled, and splurged and bounded awhile, when I came up and relieved him by cutting his wizen – "

"Well, but what had that to do with an adventure?" said Riley.

"Hold on a bit, if you please, gentlemen – by Jove it had a great deal to do with it. For while I was busy skinning the hind quarters of the buck, and stowing away the kidney-fat in my hunting shirt, I heard a noise like the breaking of brush under a moccasin up 'the bottom.' My dog heard it and started up to reconnoitre, and I lost no time in reloading my rifle. I had hardly got my priming out before my dog raised a howl and broke through the brush towards me with his tail down, as he was not used to doing unless there were wolves, painters (panthers) or Injins about.

"I picked up my knife, and took up my line of march in a skulking trot up the river. The frequent gullies, on the lower bank, made it tedious travelling there, so I scrabbled up to the upper bank, which was pretty well covered with buckeye and sycamore and very little under-brush. One peep below discovered to me three as big and strapping red rascals, gentlemen, as you ever clapt your eyes on! Yes, there they came, not above six hundred yards in my rear. Shouting and yelling like hounds, and coming after me like all possessed."

"Well," said an old woodsman sitting at the table, "you took a tree of course?"

"Did I? No, gentlemen! I took no tree just then, but I took to my heels like sixty, and it was just as much as my old dog could do to keep up with me. I run until the whoops of my red skins grew fainter and fainter behind me; and clean out of wind, I ventured to look behind me, and there came one single red whelp, puffing and blowing, not three hundred yards in my rear. He had got on to a piece of bottom where the trees were small and scarce – now, thinks I, old fellow, I'll have you. So I trotted off at a pace sufficient to let my follower gain on me, and when he had got just about near enough, I wheeled and fired, and down I brought him, dead as a door nail, at a hundred and twenty yards!"

"Then you skelp'd (scalped) him immediately?" said the backwoodsman.

"Very clear of it, gentlemen, for by the time I got my rifle loaded, here came the other two red skins, shouting and whooping close on me, and away I broke again like a quarter horse. I was now about five miles from the settlement, and it was getting towards sunset; I ran till my wind began to be pretty short, when I took a look back and there they came snorting like mad buffaloes, one about two or three hundred yards ahead of the other, so I acted possum again until the foremost Injin got pretty well up, and I wheeled and fired at the very moment he was 'drawing a bead' on me; he fell head over stomach into the dirt, and up came the last one!"

"So you laid for him and – " gasped several.

"No," continued the "member," "I didn't lay for him, I hadn't time to load, so I layed legs to ground, and started again. I heard every bound he made after me. I ran and ran, until the fire flew out of my eyes, and the old dog's tongue hung out of his mouth a quarter of a yard long!"

"Phe-e-e-e-w!" whistled somebody.

"Fact! gentlemen. Well, what I was to do I didn't know – rifle empty, no big trees about, and a murdering red Indian not three hundred yards in my rear; and, what was worse, just then it occurred to me that I was not a great ways from a big creek, (now called Mill Creek,) and there I should be pinned at last.

"Just at this juncture I struck my toe against a root, and down I tumbled, and my old dog over me. Before I could scrabble up – "

"The Indian fired!" gasped the old woodsman.

"He did, gentlemen, and I felt the ball strike me under the shoulder; but that didn't seem to put any embargo upon my locomotion, for as soon as I got up I took off again, quite freshened by my fall! I heard the red skin close behind me coming booming on, and every minute I expected to have his tomahawk dashed into my head or shoulders.

"Something kind of cool began to trickle down my legs into my boots – "

"Blood, eh? for the shot the varmint gin you," said the old woodsman, in a great state of excitement.

"I thought so," said the Senator, "but what do you think it was?"

Not being blood, we were all puzzled to know what the blazes it could be. When Riley observed —

"I suppose you had – "

"Melted the deer fat which I had stuck in the breast of my hunting shirt, and the grease was running down my legs until my feet got so greasy that my heavy boots flew off, and one hitting the dog, nearly knocked his brains out."

We all grinned, which the "member" noticing, observed —

"I hope, gentlemen, no man here will presume to think I'm exaggerating?"

"O, certainly not! Go on, Mr. – ," we all chimed in.

"Well, the ground under my feet was soft, and being relieved of my heavy boots, I put off with double quick time, and seeing the creek about half a mile off, I ventured to look over my shoulder to see what kind of a chance there was to hold up and load. The red skin was coming jogging along pretty well blowed out, about five hundred yards in the rear. Thinks I, here goes to load any how. So at it I went – in went the powder, and putting on my patch, down went the ball about half-way, and off snapped my ramrod!"

"Thunder and lightning!" shouted the old woodsman, who was worked up to the top-notch in the "member's" story.

"Good gracious! wasn't I in a pickle! There was the red whelp within two hundred yards of me, pacing along and loading up his rifle as he came! I jerked out the broken ramrod, dashed it away and started on, priming up as I cantered off, determined to turn and give the red skin a blast any how, as soon as I reached the creek.

"I was now within a hundred yards of the creek, could see the smoke from the settlement chimneys; a few more jumps and I was by the creek. The Indian was close upon me – he gave a whoop, and I raised my rifle; on he came, knowing that I had broken my ramrod and my load not down; another whoop! whoop! and he was within fifty yards of me! I pulled trigger, and – "

"And killed him?" chuckled Riley.

"No, sir! I missed fire!"