in narrow flues and what not, And be poked up behind with a picked pointed pole, when the soot has ketch’d, and the chimbly’s red hot. Oh I’d give the whole wide world, if the world was mine, to clap my two longin’ eyes on his face. For he’s my darlin of darlins, and if he don’t soon come back, you’ll see me drop stone dead on the place. I only wish I’d got him safe in these two Motherly arms, and wouldn’t I hug him and kiss him! Lauk! I never knew what a precious he was--but a child don’t not feel like a child till you miss him. Why there he is! Punch and Judy hunting, the young wretch, it’s that Billy as sartin as sin! But let me get him home, with a good grip of his hair, and I’m blest if he shall have a whole bone in his skin!” [Illustration: POTTED SHRIMPS.] SKETCHES ON THE ROAD. THE OBSERVER. “It’s very strange,” said the coachman,--looking at me over his left shoulder--“I never see it afore--but I’ve made three observations through life.” Bat--so called for shortness, though in feet and inches he was rather an Upper Benjamin--was anything but what Othello denominates “a puny whipster.” He had brandished the whip for full thirty years, at an average of as many miles a day; the product of which, calculated according to Cocker, appears in a respectable sum total of six figures deep. Now an experience picked up in a progress of some three hundred thousand miles is not to be slighted; so I leaned with my best ear over the coachman’s shoulder, in order to catch every syllable. “I have set on the box, man and boy,” said Bat, looking straight ahead between his leaders, “a matter of full thirty year, and what’s more, never missing a day--barring the Friday I was married; and one of my remarks is--I never see a sailor in top-boots.” “Now I think of it, Bat,” said I, a little disconcerted at my windfall from the tree of knowledge, “I have had some experience in travelling myself, and certainly do not recollect such a phenomenon.” “I’ll take my oath you haven’t,” said Bat, giving the near leader a little switch of self-satisfaction. “I once driv the Phenomenon myself. There’s no such thing in nature. And I’ll tell you another remarkable remark I’ve made through life--I never yet see a Jew Pedlar with a Newfoundland dog.” “As for that, Bat,” said I, perhaps willing to retort upon him a little of my own disappointment, “though I cannot call such a sight to mind--I will not undertake to say I have never met with such an association.” “If you have, you’re a lucky man,” said Bat, somewhat sharply, and with a smart cut on the wheeler; “I belong to an association too, and we’ve none of us seen it. There’s a hundred members, and I’ve enquired of every man of ’em, for it’s my remark. But some people see a deal more than their fellows. Mayhap you’ve seen the other thing I’ve observed through life, and that’s this--I’ve never observed a black man drive a long stage.”