The writer was present at a similar occurrence. There were a half score of boys seated upon some logs near the country school-house, during recess, listening to a story, something about “an old woman who had just reached a well, with a pitcher to obtain some water, when the old lady tripped her toe, and fell into the well head foremost.”
At this juncture one of the listeners fell forward from the log in a fit. We were greatly frightened, but mustered sufficient courage to throw some water in the boy’s face, when he gradually came to his senses, exclaiming,—
“Did she break the pitcher, Johnny?”
To Mrs. Bray’s book we are again indebted for the following:—
“A bon-vivant, brought to his death-bed by an immoderate use of wine, was one day informed by his physician that he could not, in all human probability, survive many hours, and that he would die before eight o’clock the following morning, summoned all his remaining strength to call the doctor back, and, when the physician had returned, made an ineffectual attempt to rise in bed, saying, with the true recklessness of an innate gambler,—
“‘Doctor, I’ll bet you some bottles that I live till nine!’”
“Let go the Halliards.”
A sailor was taken with the pleurisy on board a vessel that was hauling through the “seven bridges” that span the Charles River from the Navy Yard to Cambridgeport, and a well-known physician, rather of the Falstaffian make-up, whom I may as well call Dr. Jones,—because that is not his name,—was summoned. He prescribed for the patient, and when the schooner touched the pier of the bridge, he stepped ashore, as was supposed by the captain and crew, whose whole attention was required to keep the vessel from driving against the drawer; but “there’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip,” and the old doctor had taken the “slip,” and went plump overboard, unseen by any.