THE BIG BEAU OF ARKANSAS. // 



somewhat trouMosome. l^iit, stranger, they never stick 

 twice in the same place; and give ihcm a fair chance 

 for a few montlis, and you will get as much above no- 

 ticing them as an alligator. They can't hurt my feel- 

 ings, for they lay under the skin ; and I never knew but 

 one case of injury resulting from them, and that was to 

 a Yankee : and they take worse to foreigners, any how, 

 than they do to natives. But the way they used that 

 fellow up ! first they punched him until he swelled up 

 and bu.sted ; then he sup-pcr-a-ted, as the doctor called 

 it, until he was as raw as beef; then, owing to the 

 warm weather, he tuck the ager, and finally he tuck a 

 steamboat and left the country. He was the only man 

 that ever tuck mosquitoes at heart that I knowd of. 



" But mos«|uitoes is natur, and I never find fault 

 with her. If they ar large, Arkansaw is large, her var- 

 mints ar large, her trees ar large, her rivers ar large, 

 and a small mosquito would be of no more use in Ar- 

 kansaw than preaching in a cane-brake." 



This knock-down argument in favor of big mos- 

 quitoes used the Hoosier up, and the logician started 

 on a new track, to explain how numerous bear were in 

 his " diggins," where he represented them to be " about 

 as plenty as blackberries, and a little plentifuller." 



Upon the utterance of this assertion, a timid little 

 man near me inquired, if the bear in Arkansaw ever 

 attacked the settlers in numbers ? 



" No,'' said our hero, warming with the subject, " no. 



