The usual formula of incidents peculiar to an uneventful town and its vicinity: The countryman from "Jessup's Crossing," with the corn-stalk coffin- measure, loped into town, his steaming little gray- and-red-flecked "roadster" gurgitating, as it were, with that mysterious utterance that ever has commanded and ever must evoke the wonder and bewilderment of every boy; the small-pox rumor became prevalent betimes, and the subtle aroma of the asafetida-bag permeated the graded schools "from turret to foundation-stone"; the still recurring expose of the poor-house management; the farm-hand, with the scythe across his shoulder, struck dead by lightning; the long-drawn quarrel between the rival editors culminating in one of them assaulting the other with a "sidestick," and the other kicking the one down-stairs and thenceward ad libitum; the tramp, suppositiously stealing a ride, found dead on the railroad; the grand jury returning a sensational indictment against a bar-tender non est; the Temperance outbreak; the "Revival;" the Church Festival; and the "Free Lectures on Phrenology, and Marvels of Mesmerism," at the town hall. It was during the time of the last-mentioned sensation, and directly through this scientific investigation, that I came upon two of the town's most remarkable characters. And however meager my outline of them may prove, my material for the sketch is most accurate in every detail, and no deviation from the cold facts of the case shall influence any line of my report. For some years prior to this odd experience I had been connected with a daily paper at the state capital; and latterly a prolonged session of the legislature, where I specially reported, having told threateningly upon my health, I took both the advantage of a brief vacation, and the invitation of a young bachelor senator, to get out of the city for a while, and bask my respiratory organs in the revivifying rural air of Zekesbury--the home of my new friend. "It'll pay you to get out here," he said cordially, meeting me at the little station, "and I'm glad you've come, for you'll find no end of odd characters to amuse you." And under the very pleasant sponsorship of my senatorial friend, I was placed at once on genial terms with half the citizens of the little town--from the shirt-sleeved nabob of the county office to the droll wag of the favorite loafing- place--the rules and by-laws of which resort, by the way, being rudely charcoaled on the wall above the cutter's bench, and somewhat artistically culminating in an original dialect legend which ran thus: F'r instunce, now, when SOME folks gits To relyin' on theyr wits, Ten to one they git too smart And SPILE it all, right at the start! Feller wants to jest go slow And do his THINKIN' first, you know, 'F I CAST'T THINK UP SOMEPIN' GOOD, I SET STILL AND CHAW MY COOD!