Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/143

 passengers in remote parts of the town, and have been industriously picked up by the fishermen." When Grip, his raven, falls sick, towards eleven o'clock he was so much worse that "it was found necessary to muffle the stable-knocker."

But we have made improvements in this style of fiction, and almost every newspaper might furnish forth a play. We are told of grass in Colorado that is so short you must lather it before you can mow. We hear of a man who moves about so lazily that when he works in his garden the shade of his hat kills the plants. Another man wakes up in the morning, after a day spent in hunting strawberries, with only one eye, the other being engaged in holding the cheek which had marched over it during the night. It was a case of dog-wood poison. The relatives did not find his mouth until near noon, when it was discovered just back of his left ear, enjoying the shade. There was a man who stood on his head under a pile-driver to have a pair of tight boots driven on. He found himself shortly after in China, perfectly naked and without a cent in his pocket.

There is a man in the West who is so bow-legged that his pantaloons have to be cut out with a circular saw. Apropos of this, a pair of pantaloons which was distributed to one of the sufferers by the forest fires, a few years ago, was found to be ridiculously small. The man's wife wanted to know if there lived and breathed a man who had legs no bigger: if there did, he ought to be taken up for vagrancy as having no visible means of support. It was discussed whether to use them for