CHAPTER IX. 



FIRST OR GAGE'S LAKE. AN EMBARRASING POSITION. 

 THE INCIDENT OF AN IRON POT. 



I have been in several embarrassing positions in my 

 life. Once when a young man just emerging from my 

 teens, while bathing in what I considered a sufficiently 

 sequestered spot to insure perfect privacy, a young 

 lady came along and sat down on the rock under 

 which my clothes were concealed. She had a novel 

 which she commenced to read, and the work must 

 have been of absorbing interest, for she read for fully 

 half an hour without any signs of letting up or mov- 

 ing on. Meanwhile I had taken refuge in a rush bed, 

 about fifty yards away, from which I was anxiously 

 awaiting her exit. The water was cold and I was at 

 last in sheer desperation obliged to acquaint her with 

 the fact of my presence. She was a young lady of 

 quick discernment, for grasping the situation in an 

 instant, simultaneously with the piercing shriek which 

 evidenced her discovery of my proximity she vacated 

 the spot with the celerity of a frightened hare. 



Another time, when doing the fatherly act at Pudgy 

 Stickel's wedding, I was chosen as the most proper 

 person to donate the bride (pretty little Arabella Wil- 

 kins) to my old friend Pudgy. Things got so mixed 

 up that the ceremony was all but performed before 

 it was discovered that, instead of giving the bride 

 away, I had been mistaken by the purblind old parson 

 who performed the ceremony for the bridegroom, and 

 was receiving her instead. However, things were set 

 right at the last moment, and Pudgy who was un- 

 earthed from behind a pew in a complete state of 

 nervous prostration was put in my place and received 

 his bride with the last line of the marriage service. 

 (71) 



