“You never did see a feller so set back in your life. He looked at me as though I had as many heads onto me as the beast we read about in the Scripters. I’ll allers believe that he was in cahoot with old Glass-eye, and jist kept him thar to pick quarrels with strangers so they could have the pickin’ over of thar effects. “Arter washin’ my hands and plasterin’ up the cut on my forehead a little, I went out and saddled the mule, and the crowd all came out to see me gwine off. I reckon if I had stopped in the village I could have had things about my own way for some time. Before I rode off I turned round to ’em and ses:— “‘When you git so frightened of a bully ag’in that you daren’t sneeze within forty feet of him, jest send for me, and I’ll open him up ready for saltin’ while you’d be wipin’ your mouth.’ “With that I rode off, and left ’em all starin’ at each other, and then arter me, as though wonderin’ who or what I was, anyhow.” [Illustration] [Illustration] ROLLER SKATING. Oh! skating, roller skating now, of pastimes takes the lead; No more we take the moonlight sail, or mount the prancing steed, No more to fair, or carnival, no more to masquerade, No more along the lengthy bridge, the thousands promenade, No more we see Othello rave, and roll his jealous eyes, Or Hamlet leaping in the grave, where loved Ophelia lies, Or see the boasting Falstaff sheath his blade in Percy’s corse, Or hear the baffled Richard shout, “My kingdom for a horse!” In vain the minstrels shake the bones, and tell the funny tale, Their blazoned bill, or blatant band, to draw the public fail; For those, who still their millions hide, and those at ruin’s brink, Alike throw business cares aside, and hasten to the Rink. Talk of your bounding horseback rides, or of the grace indeed. A maiden shows when she bestrides the frail velocipede; I charge ye, if you’d see a maid when graceful she appears, Go see her on the roller skates, as round the Rink she steers. A TERRIBLE NOSE. I was to-day brought in contact with an old gentleman named Bickerstaff, who keeps a crockery store in the village where I am visiting. This Bickerstaff is the unfortunate possessor of the queerest-looking nose I have yet encountered. It was not the original intention of Providence that he should follow such a proboscis through life, for there was a time when he, like other men, had a forerunner ornamental as well as useful. But through an accident, the nose he now bears in all its deformity was shoved upon him. [Illustration: BUSTING HIS BUGLE.] It seems one day, while furiously pursuing a little urchin who had mischievously put a stone through a glass jar by the door, he ran his face against the end of a scantling a boy was carrying past on his shoulder, and set his nose well up on his forehead in a triangular lump.