When a bronco comes up to me and lays his head over my shoulder, and asks me to scratch his chilblain for him, I always excuse myself on the ground that I have a family dependent on me, and furthermore, that I am a United States Commissioner, and to a certain extent the government hinges on me. Think what a ghastly hole there would be in the official staff of the republic if I were launched into eternity now, when good men are so scarce. Some days I worry a good deal over this question. Suppose that some unprincipled political enemy who wanted to be United States Commissioner or Notary Public in my place should assassinate me!!! Lots of people never see this. They sec how smoothly the machinery of government moves along, and they do not dream of possible harm. They do not know how quick she might slip a cog, or the eccentric get jammed through the indicator, if, some evening when I am at the opera house, or the minstrel show, the assassin should steal up on me, and shoot a large, irregular aperture into my cerebellum. This may not happen, of course; but I suggest it, so that the public will, as it were, throw its protecting arms about me, and not neglect me while I am alive. PUMPKIN JIM; OR THE TALE OF A BUSTED JACKASS RABBIT. CHAPTER I.--PUMPKIN JIM. |It was evening in the mountains. The golden god of day was gliding slowly adown the crimson west. Here and there the cerulean dome was flecked with snowy clouds. The flecks were visible to the naked eye. Meanwhile the golden god of day, hereinbefore referred to, continued to glide adown the crimson west, with about the same symmetrical glide. It had done so on several occasions previous to the opening of this story. The katydid was singing sleepily in the long grass, and the grizzly bear was trilling between eleven trills on the still air. It was a spot where the foot of man had never trod, and the undisturbed temple of nature with its hallowed hush and never ending repose. The lofty pines were swaying softly to and fro in the gentle breeze of evening, and the babbling brook went babbling along down its rocky bed in the bottom of the canon, with a merry bab. All at once, like a flash of dazzling light, a noble youth came slowly down the mountain side, riding an ambling palfrey of the narrow-guage variety, with a paint-brush tail on him--(that is the palfrey, of course.) The palfrey was a delicate buckskin color, with high, intellectual ears and Roman nose. In crossing the stream the palfrey stubbed his toe, and fell on his noble rider, breaking the man's leg in three places, and jamming one of his ribs through the liver and into the ground, thus pinning him to the earth, and preventing him from rising. The buckskin palfrey, with almost human foresight, and wonderful intelligence, found a soft place in the grassy bottom, and lay down.