666 On Snakes, their Fangs, 



more severely than Diana of old made Actaeon pay for an ill- 

 timed peep. She merely changed the hunter into a stag : 

 they chased the man, and barbarously stung him to death. 



When a man is ranging the forest, and sees a serpent 

 gliding towards him (which is a very rare occurrence), he 

 has only to take off in a side direction, and he may be per- 

 fectly assured that it will not follow him. Should the man, 

 however, stand still, and should the snake be one of those 

 overgrown monsters capable of making a meal of a man, in 

 these cases, the snake would pursue its course ; and, when it 

 got sufficiently near to the place where the man was standing, 

 would raise the fore part of its body in a retiring attitude, 

 and then dart at him and seize him. A man may pass within 

 a yard of rattlesnakes with safety, provided he goes quietly ; 

 but, should he irritate a rattlesnake, or tread incautiously 

 upon it, he would infallibly receive a wound from its fang; 

 though, by the by, with the point of that fang curved down- 

 wards, not upwards. Should I ever be chased by a snake, 

 I should really be inclined to suspect that it was some 

 slippery emissary of Beelzebub : for, I will forfeit my ears, if 

 any of old Dame Nature's snakes are ever seen to chase 

 either man or beast. They know better than to play pranks, 

 which the dame has peremptorily forbidden. 



In the village of Walton there is a cross road known by 

 the name of Blind Lane. One summer's evening, as an old 

 woman, named Molly Mokeson was passing up the causeway 

 in this lane, a man, by name Wilson, saw a snake gliding on- 

 wards in the same direction. " Molly," said he, " look ! 

 there 's a snake running after you." She turned her head to 

 see what was the matter ; and, on observing the snake ap- 

 proaching, fear "seized her withered veins." After getting 

 some twenty yards further up the causeway, she took refuge 

 in a neighbour's house, and sat down in silent apprehension, 

 not having breath enough to tell her troubles. In the mean- 

 time, Wilson had followed up the snake, and, being without 

 a stick, he had tried repeatedly to kick it, but had always 

 missed his mark. All of a sudden, the snake totally dis- 

 appeared. Now, the true solution of this chase is nothing 

 more or less than that the snake had been disturbed by the 

 old woman, and had taken its departure for some other place, 

 but, on seeing a man coming up from behind, it had glided 

 harmlessly along the path which the old woman had taken; 

 and then, to save its life, it had slipped into the weeds in the 

 hedge-bottom. 



Nothing was talked of in the village, but how that Molly 

 Mokeson had been chased by the devil ; for the good people 



