74 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
“A little humor now and then, 
Is relished by the best of men.” 
From the Knickerbocker Magazine. 
EXTRACTS FROM THE EDITOR’S TABLE. 
- * - 
A Hard Head. —Some idea of the hardness 
of a genuine Sambo’s head maybe gathered 
from the annexed paragraph, which we find 
in the Daily Eagle, printed at Memphis, Tenn. 
A ‘ colored pusson,’ well known about town 
as Old Kit, while passing under a new three- 
story building, in process of erection, a 
brick-bat fell from the hand of a brick-layer 
on the wall above, and in descending came 
in contact with the negro’s head. The re¬ 
sistance was great, and the brick-bat was 
broken in two. After recovering from the 
temporary stun, he addressed the brick-layer 
with : “ I say, you w’ite man up dar, ef you 
don’t want yer bricks broke, just keep ’em off 
my head!” 
Satire by Inversion. —By the by, we have 
a good many clever anecdotes of the odd and 
bright sayings of the dark people, but we 
have seldom heard a keener satire than was 
expressed by a colored boy, as related to us 
just now, by a friend upon whom no good 
thing was ever lost: It seems that he was 
looking through a grave-yard fence upon the 
tomb-stone of a villager who in life had been 
known as a rather close-fisted citizen, whose 
principal care had been the greatest good of 
the greatest number, the greatest number 
with him having been number one. After 
a pompous inscription, the following passage 
of Scripture was l’ecorded: “ He that giveth 
to the poor, lendeth to the Lord.” “ Dat 
may be,” soliloquized Sambo, “ but w’en dat 
man died, de Lord didn't owe 'im a red cent! 
E’yah ! e’yah! e’yah!” Now if that isn’t a 
good specimen of satire by inversion, we 
have misconceived its drift. 
Cured of Lisping. —“ Did you go to Dr. 
-, to have him cure you of lisping V' said 
a gentleman in Louisville to a little boy who 
had been tongue-tied. 
“ Yeth, thir,” answered the lad. 
“ What did lie do to you ?” 
“He cut a little thring there wath under 
my tongue.” 
“ Did he cure you V ’ 
“Yeth, thir.” 
“Why, you are lisping now !” 
“ Am I, thir 1 Well I don’t pertheive that 
I lithp, exlhept when I go to thay thichthpenth! 
Then I alwayth notithe it.” 
Happy lad ! “ Where ignorance is bliss, 
’tis folly to be wise.” 
Free Passes. —One of the greatest sources 
of annoyance and perplexity to inanagers of 
railways is the indiscriminate and intermin¬ 
able applications by all sorts and conditions 
of men, (and women, too, for that matter,) 
for free passes. The following is a fact, 
and there is ice in it: The manager of a 
railroad in this State, who had been belea¬ 
guered by pastors and people for passes to 
a Methodist Conference, which he courte¬ 
ously but firmly resisted, was at last solicited 
by a brother to pass nine ministers to a 
neighboring town to attend a funeral. The 
pass was given, and on the following day the 
Company was called on by the brother to 
redeem the pass in money; our brother 
modestly giving as a reason that the nine 
ministers of the gospel had found it conve¬ 
nient to take another conveyance, and he had 
paid their fare! 
Shanghais and a short Corn Crop. —Our old 
friend A. H. S., up the river, fairly antici¬ 
pated our hint. The Shanghai mother and 
brood, cabined, cooped, confined, arrived as 
per invoice, in good order and condition. 
The little fellows of the party presented 
rather a singular aspect when they first came 
to hand, their elder brothers having picked 
off all the feathers from their high-backed 
rumps. But all have flourished abundantly. 
Their at first inordinate drum-sticks have 
been growing to legs ever since, and they 
have become very familiar, feeding almost 
out of hand. And how they do eat!—and 
the national corn-crop a short one, too! 
Two of the young roosters have already re¬ 
hearsed two or three crows; but their 
“ clarion of the morn ” sounds more like a 
wind-broken tin horn, feebly blown, than 
any thing else. The mother is fructifying. 
She lays an egg every day about 11 o’clock, 
and lets us know it by an exultant “ cut—cut 
—cut—cut— dar —cut!” when she has got 
through. The Shanghai family live on the 
best of terms with the native brood, hereto¬ 
fore spoken of; sharing generously each 
other’s crumbs and kernels in exact propor¬ 
tion to their comparative nimbleness and 
strength! 
Lightning and Thunder. —There’s point in 
the following, if it ivas said by a child : Our 
Georgy is something over six years old, and 
has a keen eye for every thing beautiful in 
nature, although he sometimes makes it 
ridiculous in attempting comments. The 
other day we had a fine thunder-storm, with 
almost incessant flashes of lightning. Georgy 
and myself were sitting in the barn, admiring 
the lightning, which darted from cloud to 
cloud, and then to the ground; and he wanted 
to know what made it “ go so,” illustrating 
its zig-zag motion with his hand. I could 
not explain it so that he could clearly under¬ 
stand, and was obliged to tell him I didn’t 
know. He thought a moment and said : “ I 
s’pose God thinks it looks prettier crooking 
round in that way !” Presently there came 
a succession of tremendous crashes, and the 
little fellow jumped up and clapped his hands, 
exclaiming, “ Are n’t those good ones, fa¬ 
ther 1 That’s better than cannon, is n’t it 1 
You do n’t have to stop to load !” 
A BEAR STORY. 
We have small confidence in the “ old Ohio 
pilots,” they tell such awfully large stories. 
They have no conscience in their exaggera¬ 
tions. We have been among them “ long 
ago.” We started from Olean Point, in the 
County of Cattaraugus, a great place in those 
days, on the Alleghany river. We went 
down to its confluence with the Ohio, on a 
lumber raft, and then we got on board of a 
periogue of some four or five tons burden, 
and went ahead. Cincinnati was compara¬ 
tively a small place then. It was not a great 
and beautiful city, with long, wide streets, 
cutting each other at right angles, reaching 
away in a long vista of shade trees, and 
lined with magnificient business structures 
and elgant dwellings. Along the majestic 
Ohio were great old forests of gigantic 
growth, where now are broad farms, teeming 
with agricultural wealth. There were occa¬ 
sional broad lagoons and marshes, swamps 
covered with lowland trees, and it is a sim¬ 
ple truth, that, when the sun was running 
low and the shadows of evening were gather¬ 
ing around, the mosquitoes were out in their 
might, and they were an extraordinary breed. 
We had an “ old pilot,” who was an original 
in his way, and the stories he told of the 
early settlement, and of the incidents occur- 
ing in his experience in the “ olden time,” 
were astonishing. 
We remember a bear story of his telling. 
He seemed to believe it himself, for he told 
it with a gravity of face that would ill com¬ 
port with its falsity. We do not vouch for 
its verity, we simply tell it as the “ old pilot ” 
told it to us, one pleasant afternoon, as we 
were gliding along quietly down the Ohio, 
fighting mosquitoes and watching the sun, 
as he was sinking down into the western 
wilderness, casting the dark shadows of the 
woods far out over the waters. 
“ Twenty years ago,” said the “ old pilot,” 
as he lighted his stump of a pipe and seated 
himself on a whisky keg, “ there warn’t a 
great many people along the banks of the 
Ohi-o, except ingins and bears, andjwe didn’t 
like to cultivate a very close friendship with 
either of them, for the ingins were cheatin’ 
deceivin’, scalpin’ critters, and the bears 
sometimes had an onpleasant way with ’em 
that one didn’t like. I came out for some 
people over on the east side of the moun¬ 
tains, lookin’ for land, with a company of 
four men who had hunted over the country. 
“ We came down the Alleghany in two 
canoes, and shanteed on the Ohio, just below 
where the Alleghany enters it. We hid our 
canoes and struck across the country, and 
traveled about exploring for four weeks. 
We saw a mighty deal of good land that 
trip, aud when we got back to our shantying 
ground we were tuckered out, as you may 
well believe. We rested here a couple of 
days, laying around loose, and taking our 
comfort after a fashion of our own. Early 
one morning, while my comrades were asleep 
I rose and went across the river after a deer 
for we wanted venison for breakfast. I got 
a buck and was returning, when what should 
I see but a bear swimming the Ohi-o, and I 
put after him “in chase ; I soon overhauled 
the critter, and picked up my rifle to give him 
a settler, when I found that in paddling I had 
spattered water into the canoe, wetting the 
primin’ and making the thing of no more use 
than a stick. I didn’t understand much 
about the nater of the beast then, and thought 
I’d run him down and drown him, or knock 
him on the head. So I put the canoe right 
head on towards him, but when the bow 
touched him, what did he do but reach his 
great paws up over the side of the boat and 
begin to climb in. I hadn’t bargained for 
that, and felt mighty onpleasant, you may 
believe, at the prospect of having such a pas¬ 
senger. 
“I had’nt time to get at him with my rifle 
until he came tumblin’ into the bow of the 
dug-out, and as he seated himself on his 
stern, showed as fine a set of ivory as a body 
would wish to see. There we sat, he in one 
end of the dug-out and I in the other, eyeing 
one another in a mightily suspicious sort of 
way. He did’nt seem inclined to come to 
my end of the canoe, and I was principled 
agin goin’ toward his. I made ready to 
take to the water on short notice, but at the 
same time concluded to paddle him ashore 
if he’d let me do it quietly. Well, I paddled 
away, the bear every now and then grin¬ 
ning at me, skinning his face till every tooth 
in his head stood right out, and grumblin’ to 
himself in a way that seemed to say : ‘ I 
wonder if that chap is good to eat.’ I did'nt 
say a word to him, treating him all the time 
like a gentleman, but kept pullin’ for the 
shore. When the canoe touched the ground 
he clambered over the side and climbed up 
the bank, and giving me an extra grin, start¬ 
ed off into the woods. I pushed the dug- 
out back suddenly, and gave him, as he left, 
an extra war-whoop, which seemed to aston¬ 
ish him, for he quickened his pace mightily, 
as if quite as glad as I was to part company. 
I’ve never tried to drown a bear since, and 
shan’t undertake to do it again in a hurry.” 
[Albany Register. 
Modern. —“ Blanchy, my son, run to the 
store and get me some sugar.” “ Excuse me, 
ma, I am somewhat indisposed this morning. 
Send father; and tell him to bring me a plug 
of tobacco.” 
