A gentleman of my acquaintance, passing along a bridle path, observed a mouse running backwards and forwards, upon a fallen log, as if in great terror. Reining in this horse, he paused full ten minutes, and until the mouse disappeared on the farther side of the log. Drawing nearer, and peeping over, his suspicions of Lucifer's guile were verified--for mousey was within three inches of his open jaw, "irresistibly attracted," said the narrator, "although he was drawing back with all his might." The latter part of the tale is fishy--for the gentleman was twenty feet off, and could not nave seen that--but he saw the mouse finally disappear in that cavernous gullet; and when he killed the snake-a large black one--the mouse lay in its stomach, _without a wound_. How will that do? Another, well authenticated. A young man, of some twenty years, passing along the road to school, on foot, was observed by some of his companions in the rear to pause suddenly and look down. His fellows intent on their conversation, were several minutes coming up; but when they did so they witnessed a veritable case of fascination--for the young man was looking intently into the eyes of a large rattlesnake, coiled at his feet; nor could the voices of all his friends arouse him. Being jerked back with some violence, he instantly recovered his senses, but seemed to be puzzled to recall the circumstances connected with his first view of the snake. After a mental effort he explained, while the cold sweat poured from his face, and his limbs were flaccid as an infant's, that the sound of a rattle had caused him to stop short--that a pleasant halo danced before his eyes, and sweet sounds met his ears--and that from that instant until the conclusion of the trance, "he was as happy as he ever expected to be!" But now for the hardest knock of conviction. I will give it in the language of the original narrator--premising that opponents to the theory of serpent attraction must knock under, or flatly contradict my tale. In the latter event, I shall be compelled to settle the question as Hodginson did his lawsuit, "by exhibiting the skin and parading the witnesses."