26 THE OUT-STATION ; OR, 



(By way of parenthesis, I must be allowed to relate 

 an anecdote of this same punning wag. 



One of the big- wigs of the island passed half his 

 time in collecting antiquities (a sort of virtuoso was 

 he in every thing, from a starved fire-fly to a tri- 

 angular cocoa-nut), varied in their degrees of mouldi- 

 ness and curiosity. 



One sanctum, and a tolerably large one it was, was 

 devoted to the purpose of an inanimate menagerie, 

 which one fine morning received an addition from our 

 friend in the shape of a "Muscovite" chair. 



The donor was asked to dinners and suppers innu- 

 merable on the strength of the gift, and it was upwards 

 of a year before the old gentleman found out that the 

 only claim the chair could adduce to being a Mus- 

 covite, lay in the fact of its being a "Rush J un." 



However, the perpetrator of the joke had not to 

 stand the brunt of the discovery, for he was 14,000 

 miles away, and of course the Rush'un soon found its 

 Siberia in the kitchen.) 



But to return to our bears. 



The seriousness with which our brother officer told 

 the bear story, left no doubt on the minds of any 

 present, that, at all events, it was " founded in fact," 

 and revenge and brandy-paunee simultaneously in- 

 flaming the party, it was agreed before 5 P.M., to 

 inflict summary chastisement on this ursine highway- 

 man, so away we sallied, armed with guns, rifles, &c., 

 headed by the major, with a brace of horse-pistols. 



