“Lawd, naw, bub!” exclaimed a toothless old fellow, bent nearly double as he sat on a front bench, his clasped hands between his knees. “We-uns want ter view all ye know how ter do,--all ye know how ter do, son.” Here and there reassuring voices confirmed the spokesman, and as the discomfited juggler turned to the table drawer, resolving on something less bloody-minded, he heard a vague titter from that portion of the building in which, being young, he had already observed that the greater number of personable maidens were seated. None so dread ridicule as the satirist. He whirled around, his heart swelling indignantly, his eyes flashing fire, to perceive, advancing down the aisle, a fat woman in a gigantic sunbonnet, which, however, hardly obscured her broad, creased, dimpled face, a brown calico dress wherein the waist-line must ever be a matter of conjecture, and a little shoulder-shawl of bright red-and-yellow plaid. She slowly approached him with something of steel glittering in her hands, and at his amazed and dumfounded expression of countenance the girlish cachinnation which he so resented broke forth afresh. “Beg pardon?” he said more than once, as from his elevation he sought to catch her request. A single tooth of the upper register, so to speak, however ornamental, did not serve to render more distinct the fat woman’s wheeze, in which she sought to articulate her desire that he should forthwith swallow her big shears, so fascinated was she by the evidence he had given of his proficiency in the arts of the impossible. “Certainly, with pleasure,--always anxious to oblige the ladies,” he protested, with a return of his covert mockery, as he bowed after a dancing-class fashion, and received from her fat creased hands the great domestic implement with its dangling steel chain. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he declared, with his hand upon his heart, as she subsided, shaking with laughter, on the front bench, “I cannot refrain from expressing my flattered sense of this mark of the confidence reposed in me by this distinguished audience, as well as by the estimable lady who is so willing to offer her shears on the altar of science. She is not satisfied with the warlike bayonet. She desires to see the same experiment, _mutatis mutandis_, on a pair of shears, which are devoted to the tender-hearted and affable uses of the work-basket, filled with the love of home and gentle fireside associations, and--and--and other domestic scraps. The rivet is a trifle loose, and I hope I may not be forced to disgorge the blades separately.” He was holding up the scissors as he spoke these words, so that all could see them; the next moment they had disappeared down his throat, as it were, and the astounded audience sat as if resolved into eyes, staring spellbound.