University of Virginia Library

A "DOWN EAST" ORIGINAL.

I was rash enough on the first of the month to go into
the country to live, seduced by Ralph Waldo Emerson's
laudation of Spring, and am heartily sick of it, for the
wind has been on a blow ever since, and, like a big
baby, made a child's rattle of every thing it could lay
its hands to, from a "huckleberry" bush up to an orthodox
meeting-house. But there is one consolation: my
hen's nest is so arranged that the eggs fall directly from
the fowl into my skillet of hot water; consequently I
eat them fresher, perhaps, than they do at some boarding-houses,
where the landladies appear to believe that
they are not fit to cook until they have attained the
haut gout. Or, perhaps, they keep them until they are
cheap enough to eat, on the same principle that "Johnny
L—" (of whom so many queer stories are told) kept
his fish. "Johnny" was seen carrying home a piece

of fresh salmon at a time when it was a dollar a pound;
he was asked why he didn't wait until it was cheaper?
"Aha!" replied Johnny, "I know what I'm about. I
shall put it in my ice-chest, and when it gets down to
twenty-five cents a pound, I shall eat it!"

Johnny is the same "stick" who set a light that the
rats might see to go into his trap, and when asked by
the painter what letter he would have put on the panel
of his carriage, preferred W, because he thought it the
best looking in the whole alphabet. He once marked
up the prices of his goods in a dull season, and when
he had finished the job went home and told his wife he
had made a thousand dollars by the operation—forgetting
that the merchandise yet remained to be sold.
Told, once, that his store was on fire, he said it couldn't
be, for he had the key in his pocket; and he is said to
have ordered a huge thermometer to regulate the weather,
and locked his door to keep the heat out. When he had
killed his pig, he sagely remarked that "it didn't weigh
as much as he expected, and he never thought it would."
He sold half of his porker to a neighbour, but it was a
question how it should be divided, after cutting it across
in the middle. The neighbour proposed that L—
should put his hand unseen by him on one extremity or
the other, and he'd say, without knowing what it was,
whether he would have it or not. Johnny consented,
and slightly cutting off the pig's curly termination, when
his friend's back was turned, stuck it on the nose, and
demanded, "Who shall have the part with the tail on?"
"I!" exclaimed the other triumphantly. "Then you
have got the fore-quarters!" said Johnny. On another
occasion, some waggish butchers in the market persuaded

him that it would improve the looks of his
favourite dog to cut his tail shorter. Johnny assented,
but fearing to trust the operation to any of the wags, he
got them to hold the animal while he acted as surgeon,
for he said he wanted only a very little amputated "to
begin with." After calculating very nicely where to
strike, Johnny raised the cleaver; at the same moment
the butchers shoved the dog along, so that when the
knife had fallen, the poor man found that he had severed
his cur in twain, whereupon he protested, in perfect dismay,
that "it was a little too short, by a d—d sight!"