“'Old Jones said he'd chaw you up, did he?' says the town feller, '_well, he allways keeps his word?_' “That minit I biled over. I grabbed his slick liar, and may be I didn't gin him scissors! Jest as I was makin' him a chawed specimen, some, feller holler'd out,--'don't let old Jones in with that ar rifle!' I didn't hear any more in that Bottom,--lightnin' could'nt a got near enough to singe my coat tail. I jumped through that winder as easy as a bar 'ud go through a cane brake; and cuss me if I could'nt hear the grit of old Jones' teeth, and smell his glazed powder, until I crossed old Massissippi.” A “CAT” STORY, WHICH MUST NOT BE CUR-TAILED. |Ben Snaggletree seated himself in our society the other day, overburdened with a Mississippi yarn, which embraced one of his hair breadth 'scapes, and which he had resolved on relieving his memory of, by having it chronicled. Ben was an old Mississip' roarer--none of your half and half, but just as native to the element, as if he had been born in a broad horn. He said he had been fotched up on the river's brink, and “knew a snappin' turtle from a snag, without larnin'.” “One night,” says Ben, “about as dark as the face of Cain, and as unruly as if the elements had been untied, and let loose from their great Captain's command, I was on the old Mississippi; it was, in short, a night ugly enough to make any natural born Christian think of his prayers, and a few converted saints tremble--I walked out upon the steam boat 'guard' to cool off from the effects of considerable liquor doin's, participated in during the day, but had scacely reached the side of the boat, when she struck a snag, and made a lurch, throwing me about six feet into the drink. I was sufficiently cool, stranger, when I came to the surface, but I had nigh, in a short time, set the Mississippi a bilin', my carcase grew so hot with wrath at observing the old boat wending her way up stream, unhurt, while I, solitary, unobserved, and alone, was floating on the old father of waters. I swam to the head of a small island, some distance below where we struck, and no sooner touched ground than I made an effort to stand erect. You may judge of my horror on discovering my landing place to be a Mississippi mud-bar, and about as firm as quicksand, into which I sunk about three feet in a moment. “All was dark as a stack of black cats--no object visible save the lights of the receding boat--no sound smote upon the ear but the lessening blow of the 'scape pipe, and the plashing of the surrounding waters;--the first sounded like the farewell voice of hope, while the latter, in its plashing and purling, was like to the jabbering of evil spirits, exulting over an entrapped victim.