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"Hush my dear, lie still and slumber; Holy angels guard thy bed; Heavenly 'skeeters without number Buzzing 'round your old bald head!!!"

PREACHER'S PARADISE.

There is no land on earth which has produced such quaint and curious characters as the great mountainous regions of the South, and yet no country has produced n.o.bler or brainier men.

When I was a barefooted boy my grandfather's old grist mill was the Mecca of the mountaineers. They gathered there on the rainy days to talk politics and religion, and to drink "mountain" dew and fight.

Adam Wheezer was a tall, spindle-shanked old settler as dark as an Indian, and he wore a broad, hungry grin that always grew broader at the sight of a fat sheep. The most prominent trait of Adam's character, next to his love of mutton, was his bravery. He stood in the mill one day with his empty sack under his arm, as usual, when Bert Lynch, the bully of the mountains, with an eye like a game rooster's, walked up to him and said: "Adam, you've bin a-slanderin' of me, an' I'm a-gwine to give you a thrashin'." He seized Adam by the throat and backed him under the meal spout. Adam opened his mouth to squall and it spouted meal like a whale. He made a surge for breath and liberty and tossed Bert away like a feather. Then he shot out of the mill door like a rocket, leaving his old battered plug hat and one p.r.o.ng of his coat tail in the hands of the enemy. He ran through the creek and knocked it dry as he went. He made a bee line for my grandfather's house, a quarter of a mile away, on the hill. He burst into the sitting-room, covered with meal and panting like a bellowsed horse, frightening my grandmother almost into hysterics. The old lady screamed and shouted: "What in the world is the matter, Adam?" Adam replied: "That there durned Bert Lynch is down yander a-tryin' to raise a fuss with me."

But every dog has his day. Brother Billy Patterson preached from the door of the mill on the following Sunday. It was his first sermon in that "neck of the woods," and he began his ministrations with a powerful discourse, hurling his anathemas against Satan and sin and every kind of wickedness. He denounced whiskey. He branded the bully as a brute and a moral coward, and personated Bert, having witnessed his battle with Adam.

This was too much for the champion. He resolved to "thrash" Brother Patterson, and in a few days they met at the mill. Bert squared himself and said: "Parson, you had your turn last Sunday; it's mine to-day.

Pull off that broadcloth an' take your medicine. I'm a-gwine to suck the marrow out'n them ole bones o' yourn." The pious preacher plead for peace, but without avail. At last he said: "Then, if nothing but a fight will satisfy you, will you allow me to kneel down and say my prayer before we fight?" "O yes, that's all right parson," said Bert. "But cut yer prayer short, for I'm a-gwine to give you a good sound thrashin'."

The preacher knelt and thus began to pray: "Oh Lord, Thou knowest that when I killed Bill c.u.mmings, and John Brown, and Jerry Smith, and Levi Bottles, that I did it in self defense. Thou knowest, Oh Lord, that when I cut the heart out of young Sliger, and strewed the ground with the brains of Paddy Miles, that it was forced upon me, and that I did it in great agony of soul. And now, Oh Lord, I am about to be forced to put in his coffin, this poor miserable wretch, who has attacked me here to-day.

Oh Lord, have mercy upon his soul and take care of his helpless widow and orphans when he is gone!"

And he arose whetting his knife on his shoe-sole, singing:

"Hark, from the tomb a doleful sound, Mine ears attend the cry."

But when he looked around, Bert was gone. There was nothing in sight but a little cloud of dust far up the road, following in the wake of the vanishing champion.

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BROTHER ESTEP AND THE TRUMPET.

During the great revival which followed Brother Patterson's first sermon and effective prayer, the hour for the old-fashioned Methodist love feast arrived. Old Brother Estep, in his enthusiasm on such occasions sometimes "stretched his blanket." It was his glory to get up a sensation among the brethren. He rose and said: "Bretheren, while I was a-walkin' in my gyardin late yisterday evenin', a-meditatin' on the final eend of the world, I looked up, an' I seed Gabrael raise his silver trumpet, which was about fifty foot long, to his blazin' lips, an' I hearn him give it a toot that knocked me into the fence corner an' shuck the very taters out'n the ground."

"Tut, tut," said the old parson, "don't talk that way in this meeting; we all know you didn't hear Gabrael blow his trumpet." The old man's wife jumped to her feet to help her husband out, and said: "Now parson, you set down there. Don't you dispute John's word that-away--He mout a-hearn a toot or two."

"WAMPER-JAW" AT THE JOLLIFICATION.

The sideboard of those good old times would have thrown the prohibition candidate of to-day into spasms. It sparkled with cut gla.s.s decanters full of the juices of corn, and rye, and apple. The old Squire of the mill "Deestrict" had as many sweet, buzzing friends as any flower garden or cider press in Christendom. The most industrious bee that sucked at the Squire's sideboard was old "Wamper-jaw." His mouth reached from ear to ear, and was inlaid with huge gums as red as vermilion; and when he laughed it had the appearance of lightning. On the triumphant day of the Squire's re-election to his great office, when everything was lovely and "the goose hung high," he was surrounded by a large crowd of his fellow citizens, and Thomas Jefferson, in his palmiest days, never looked grander than did the Squire on this occasion. He was attired in his best suit of homespun, the choicest product of his wife's dye pot.

His immense vest with its broad luminous stripes, checked the rotundity of his ample stomach like the lines of lat.i.tude and longitude, and resembled a half finished map of the United States. His blue jeans coat covered his body as the waters cover the face of the great deep, and its huge collar encircled the back of his head like the belts of light around a planet.

The Squire was regaling his friends with his latest side-splitting jokes. Old "Wamper-jaw" threw himself back in his chair and exploded with peal after peal of laughter. But suddenly he looked around and said: "Gen-tul-men, my jaw's flew out'n jint!"

His comrades seized him and pulled him all over the yard trying to get it back. Finally old "Wamper-jaw" mounted his mule, and with pounding heels, rode, like Tam O'Shanter, to the nearest doctor who lived two miles away. The doctor gave his jaw a mysterious yank and it popped back into socket. "Wamper-jaw" rushed back to join in the festivities at the Squire's. The gla.s.ses were filled again; another side-splitting joke was told, another peal of laughter went 'round, when "Wamper-jaw" threw his hand to his face and said: "Gen-tul-men, she's out agin!!!" There was another hasty ride for the doctor. But in the years that followed; "Wamper-jaw" was never known to laugh aloud. On the most hilarious occasions he merely showed his gums.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WAMPER-JAW."]

THE TINTINNABULATION OF THE DINNER BELLS.

How many millions dream on the lowest planes of life! How few ever reach the highest and like stars of the first magnitude, shed their light upon the pathway of the marching centuries! What mult.i.tudes there are whose horizons are lighted with visions and dreams of the flesh pots and soup bowls,--whose Fallstaffian aspirations never rise above the fat things of this earth, and whose ear flaps are forever inclined forward, listening for the dinner bells!

"The bells, bells, bells!

What a world of pleasure their harmony foretells!

The bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells!

The tintinnabulation of the dinner bells!"

In my native mountains there once lived one of these old gluttonous dreamers. I think he was the champion eater of the world. Many a time I have seen him at my grandfather's table, and the viands and battercakes vanished "like the baseless fabric of a vision,"--he left not "a wreck behind." But one day, in the voracity of his shark-like appet.i.te, he unfortunately undertook too large a contract for the retirement of an immense slice of ham. It sc.r.a.ped its way down his rebellious esophagus for about two inches, and lodged as tightly as a bullet in a rusty gun.

His prodigious Adam's apple suddenly shot up to his chin; his eyes protruded, and his purple neck craned and shortened by turns, like a trombone in full blast. He scrambled from the table and pranced about the room like a horse with blind staggers. My grandfather sprang at him and dealt him blow after blow in the back, which sounded like the blows of a mallet on a dry hide; but the ham wouldn't budge. The old man ran out into the yard and seized a plank about three feet long, and rushed into the room with it drawn.

"Now William," said he, "get down on your all-fours." William got down.

"Now William, when I hit, you swallow." He hit, and it popped like a Winchester rifle.

William shot into the corner of the room like a sh.e.l.l from a mortar, but in a moment he was seated at his place at the table again, with a broad grin on his face. "Is it down William?" shouted the old man. "Yes, Mr.

Haynes, the durned thing's gone,--please pa.s.s the ham."

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I thought how vividly that old glutton ill.u.s.trated the fools who, in their effort to gulp down the sensual pleasures of this world, choke the soul, and nothing but the clap-board of hard experience, well laid on, can dislodge the ham, and restore the equilibrium.

PHANTOMS OF THE WINE CUP.

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A little below the glutton lies the plane of the drunkard whose visions and dreams are bounded by the horizon of a still tub. "A little wine for the stomach's sake is good," but in the trembling hand of a drunkard, every crimson drop that glows in the cup is crushed from the roses that once bloomed on the cheeks of some helpless woman. Every phantom of beauty that dances in it is a devil; and yet, millions quaff, and with a hideous laugh, go staggering to the grave.

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THE MISSING LINK.