( 190 ) 

 PETER GOFF, THE MAN WITH HIS MOUTH OPEN. 



A TALE OF A YANKEE LANDLORD. 



(From a Traveller's MS.) 



IT was one winter evening that I stopped to pass the night at a 

 little village in the state of Massachusetts, where a tidy inn, kept by 

 Colonel Solomon Shagbark, offering good entertainment for man and 

 horse, had tempted me to suspend my wayfaring. 'Twas a cool 

 evening, and I sat luxuriating over a blazing wood fire, big enough 

 to roast an ox, while a knot of countrymen were convoked in the bar- 

 room, guessing, questioning, calculating drinking cider, and telling 

 stories. I was particularly amused by the noise of one of these 

 junketers, who kept up a continued chorus of laughter throughout all 

 the variations of their harmony. He was a tall fellow, of wide 

 mouth and India-rubber lungs, and sent forth every five minutes 

 such a stentorian peal, that a nervous man would have given both 

 his ears to have been an hundred miles off. 



" Moderation ! moderation !" cried one of the talkers ; " say no- 

 thing, but laugh, and do that slily." 



tf Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! ha !" continued the laugher. 



" Have a care how you stretch your jaws/' cried another ; " re- 

 member poor Peter Goff !" 



" Especially such a night as this," rejoined the first speaker, "for 

 if your face should happen to freeze just as it is now " 



" The man with his mouth open," said the laugher. " Ha ! ha ! 

 ha ! ha ! I've heard the story. Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha !" 



" Come, now," replied another, " a man that won't believe any- 

 thing old Uncle Josh used to say " 



" Pooh ! old Uncle Josh never looked through a millstone but 

 once, and then he peeped in at the hole." 



" The story may be true, and it may not," said a third speaker ; 

 " but if you had heard what the deacon told me " 



" Ay, ay !" returned the laugher, " the deacon could always see 

 more moons in the shade than any body else. Ha ! ha ! ha! ha ! 

 the man with his mouth open !" and he roared ready to split. 



I continued to listen, but could gather nothing more distinct of the 

 subject in debate. The talk soon turned into another channel ; the 

 man with the lungs continued to laugh, but it was evidently subdued 

 into something like a chuckle. Doubtless he had a lurking fear that 

 the story was true. 



"Landlord Colonel," said I, as mine host of the Washington's 

 Head stepped into the room ; " it is a cold night, let us have some- 

 thing warm, and I must get you to tell me a story." 



" A cold night you say, squire?" (a Yankee always calls you 

 'squire' who dares say the Yankees are not civil?) "A coldish 

 night, rather that is, not so warm ; but if you want to know what 

 cold weather is, just stay here till the last of January, and you'll see 

 a cold snap that will make you hum !" 



