monster.

"You're all wrong, though Hez is nearest," continued Dan. "It tossed me seventeen miles, and I lit on the back of the You well may stare; but where I struck, it hadn't yet commenced to be dead; and I give you my word it took me six hours to walk from where I was thrown, and I had a straight line of it at that. When I reached the brig, I found 'em all in a cruel state of agitation; for they thought I was lost to a dead certainty, when they saw me dartin' through the air like a maskeline telegraph. I cheered 'em up again-told 'em I was'nt a bit siled, for it was soft where I fell; and then we all hands got together on deck, and studied what we should do. I proposed, the first thing, a double allowance of grog all round, which was served out, and then they all drunk my health for savin' 'em from a horrid and sartin fate. The Captain hung a silver watch around my neck, and told me I had shown true Yankee stuff, and would be an ornament to the navy. The men all got loving tipsy, and swore they'd live and die for me. made a speech, and offered to resign in my

Then the Captain favour; but I told

him, afore I'd displace him, I'd rather stuff sassidges for a livin': and then he swore I was the noblest fellow he ever met in his life, and that I ought to be President of the United States afore I withdrew from public life. The men all got so weak in the knee-pans that day, we done nothin' but snore; and if the 'Polly' ever had a cargo of jollity aboard of her, she had then. The Captain down to the cook was as glorious tight' as humans could be. We put the question in reg'lar form, whether anybody should stay sober? and old Whisky carried the day by a sensible majority. The ship took care of itself; and if any body had been found sober, we'd thrown 'em overboard. It would ha' been disgusting and out of all character to hev walked a chalk-line on that occasion; and the upshot of the story was, the next morning's sun found us ready launched, and sails set for duty. When we all turned out, the adventure of the preceding day seemed like a dream; but one glance at the red

splosh on all sides woke us up in double-quick-time. Long Bill looked like an extensive fresh-burnt brick walkin' about; and, in fact, the men were all more or less tinged. The first thing we set about was to take the dimensions of the monster, and began operations at his head. From the tip of the nose to the back of the neck, it measured a clean twenty feet; around the shoulders, it lacked about an inch of being seventy feet; from the ears"

"Had it ears ?" inquired Abell.

"Ears! to be sure it had. Do you 'spose it could neither see nor hear? From the ears around to its belly, doublin' the line once around the neck, it measured two hundred feet; and the teeth, which were of solid ivory, each weighed half-a-ton. Some of the men hacked away a bit of the blubber from the lower jaw -for it had a double chin as fat as butter-and it yielded a giltedged ile that burned like a Drummond light! We worked for a week to get out one of the teeth, but it was no good: they were rooted so firm, that axes and boardin'-pikes were lost on 'em. The skin of the head, which was a pale blue, and clocked jist like old-fashioned Salem stockin's, was as soft as sponge; and this accounted for my hevin' killed him so sudden. If this hadn't been the case, we'd all been crushed and swallowed, without doubt; for the monster only had to half-open his mouth, and if we'd been near enough, brig, mast and all, must hev slid in, and never scraped his tonsils!

"The strangest part of the whole biz'ness is, it never struck a livin' soul of us what it was we'd captured till we had stood out from the monster a fortnight: then it was as plain as poverty-" "How was that ?" inquired the miller's man.

"Why, findin' there was no hope of loadin' with ivory, which seemed to be the only part of our prize worth takin' on freight, we rigged out a full canvas and started to find the monster's tail. We sailed on day after day, but could see no signs of it; and at the end of two weeks, when everybody was paralyzed with

amazement, and we began to think we should never come to the conclusion of the long black line, may I be chained and never let out agin if the body didn't bend down into the water, and disappear with a plunge! This was enough for me: I didn't b'lieve it had an end; or if it had, mortal men were doomed not to see it. A somethin' then whispered in my ear I had done a great deed, and the fact dashed itself with uncommon force on the beach of my mind-"

"Good heavens, Dan! what was it ?" shrieked Captain Spiggot and Abell simultaneously.

"What was it?" said Dan, the whole expanse of his bronzed countenance lighting up with a glow of exultant good humour; "how can you ask? Why, that I-I, poor Dan Suggs-had KILLED THE SEA SARPINT, TO BE SURE!"

We need not tell the reader that this last achievement elevated our hero to a still loftier position in the minds of the folks of the Connecticut River town; and it has been reserved for the writer of these pages-for otherwise the "fact" might still have been withheld from an anxious public-to proclaim Dan Suggs the original, or what is called in melodramatic parlance the "first murderer" of the celebrated and recently revived sea serpent. Long may Dan live to enjoy his laurels !

35

JONATHAN HOMEBRED.

CHAPTER I.

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR MEETS JONATHAN.

"KIN you tell me the way tew the cattle-show, stranger ?" The speaker was-but by way of making matters clear we must first describe our position.

We had but a moment before turned out of the National Gallery, where we had been lingering in a dreamy state of admiration over Titian's exquisite "Bacchus and Ariadne," and Garofalo's "Vision of St. Augustine," and ungloved one hand in order to bestow a gratuity upon a wretched old man, whose pale cheek and care-wrinkled brow told a tale of iron poverty, when we were accosted as above, and in a tone of voice' which immediately called up visions of New England, and announced the owner of the aforesaid voice, whoever he might be, as thoroughly and unequivocally American. We turned suddenly about, looked our interlocutor full in the countenance, when, much to our astonishment, who did we recognize but a glorious rustic, homespun friend from the hills of New Hamshire, whose acquaintance we had formed while "taking notes" through the Eastern States several years agone. We could scarcely put faith in the correctness of our vision, when the rough, honest representative of 'tother side of Old Ocean sought its identity. He was the very last man in the world we should have suspected of finding from the sound of the village church-bell—a tortoise

rashly and deliberately leaving its all-protecting shell would not have surprised me more.

"Why, Jonathan, what in the name of all that's agricultural are you doing on John Bull's side of the Atlantic," said we, or rather roared we, for albeit

"Tis vulgar (as Lord Chesterfield admonished)

To let folks see us startled or astonished."

If a grand jury of the superior court of good-breeding had been standing by to decide on the fate of our manners, we could not have resisted the open palm stretched towards us. We shook it till we could feel the warm blood mount with a genial flow to our temples. "How are you, my good old friend? Extremely delighted am I to meet you in London."

"Neow," exclaimed Jonathan, his ruby face gleaming with the light of simple benevolence, "tew tell yeou the truth, I can skeercely account for my comin' to England myself. You must know I got a whim in my head one day that I'd like tew see some Durham cattle, which I've hearn a heap abeout, and taste the English mutton, which they dew say beats all natar. Well, I told this notion around tew some o' the neighbors, among the rest tew Isaac Stairs. Perhaps neow yeou remember Ike when yeou were down tew Barley Creek-him that always wore the red cravat on meetin'-days. Well, Ike got tew Tunnin' me abeout England, and went so far as tew bet a pen'north of shoe-laces aginst a row of pins, with Hester Dykes, that I was afeered tew cross the sea. This come tew my ears; and if there's one thing more nur another that riles me, it's to be called a coward. My Puritan blood riz right up in my shirt, and the next day, when Ike cum to borrow a kettle for his wife to stew some pears in, I taxed him with what he'd said. The mean critter, instead of being well ashamed of himself, snorted out intew a hoss-laugh, and said if I wasn't afcard of the sea I wuz of the sharks, and so it wuz all the same thing. I up and told him he wuz as