"Where is your house?" asked a traveller in the depths of one of the "old solemn wildernesses" of the great West. "House! I ain't got no house." "Well, where do you live?" "I live in the woods, sleep on the great Government purchase, eat raw bear and wild turkey, and drink out of the Mississippi!" And he added--"It's getting too thick with the folks out here. You're the second man I've seen within the last month, and I hear there's a whole family come in about fifty miles down the river. I'm going to put out into the woods again." SNUBBING A LAWYER.--275. Old Mrs. Lawson was called as a witness. She was sharp and wide awake. At last the cross-examining lawyer, out of all patience, exclaimed, "Mrs. Lawson, you have brass enough in your face to make a twelve quart pail." "Yes," she replied, "and you've got sass enough in your head to fill it." GETTING DOWN A LADDER.--276. "Mass Tom! Oh, Mass Tom! howse I goin ter get down dis ladder?" "Come down the same way you went up, you blockhead!" replied the master, running out to see what was the matter. "De same way as I come up, Mass Tom?" "Yes, confound you, and don't bother me any more!" "Well, if I must, I must!"--and down came the little darkey head foremost. IRISH NEGRO.--277. A negro from Montzerat, or Marigalante, where the Hiberno-Celtic is spoken by all classes, happened to be on the wharf at Philadelphia when a number of Irish emigrants were landed; and seeing one of them with a wife and four children, he stepped forward to assist the family on shore. The Irishman, in his native tongue, expressed his surprise at the civility of the negro; who, understanding what had been said, replied in Irish, that he need not be astonished, for that he was a _bit of an Irishman himself_. The Irishman, surprised to hear a black man speak in his _Milesian_ dialect, it entered his mind with the usual rapidity of Irish fancy, that he really was an Irishman, but that the climate had changed his fair complexion. "_If I may be so bold, sir_," said he, "_may I ask how long you have been in this country_?" The negro man, who had only come hither on a voyage, said he had been in Philadelphia only about four months. Poor Patrick turned round to his wife and children, and looking as if for the last time on their rosy cheeks, concluding that in four months they must also change their complexion, exclaimed, "O merciful powers! Biddy, did you hear that? He is not more than four months in this country, and he is already almost as black as jet." INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.--278. The muscles of the human jaw produce a power equal to one hundred and twenty-five pounds. If you ever had your fingers in an angry man's mouth, you will not dispute the veracity of this assertion. SAYINGS OF JOSH BILLINGS.--279.