"Ah! that was the most unlikely thing I hever took to. It went aginst my stomach hawful to swaller the snakes at first, and I don't believe I'd ever have done it if it hadn't been for Judy, who said to me, when I kicked agin it,—
"'Wot difference does it make, Peter, whether you swallow red hot coals or snakes? The snakes has their stings all taken out, and its nothing more than swallowin' a sausage or pork saveloy.'"
"Well, I went at it with a very bad 'art, and my old woman used to play 'Boney's March Across the Halps,' and the 'Death of Nelson,' whenever I swallowed a snake. You see I generally took a snake about fourteen or fifteen inches, or maybe a foot and a half long. The sting is out, you know, and I takes the head and puts the snake in, and if he doesn't go down why I pinches his tail, and then he rolls down the throat. It made me sea-sick at first, and the people in Sussex thought I was the devil out and out, and a good many hexamined my feet, which were in tights, to see if I had cloven feet. A goodish lot of people thinks that the snake goes entirely down the throat, but it stands to reason that the snake is more frightened than the man, and he does not go down, and hif he did he would be glad to come up, I can tell you."
"Don't you put somethink in your throat," said a boy of fourteen, who was known among the confraternity as 'Teddy the Kinchin;' "I mean, to make the snake sick if he'd go too far."
SLAP-UP-PETER'S SONG.
"No, that's no use at all; you see he doesn't go hall the way down. He is afraid, is the snake, and if you cough he'll come up and draw himself up and coil in a bunch in your mouth. But the duffers who pay their money think that the snake is in your stomach. It stands to reason that he'd get sick. It makes a man retch, and the first snake I swallowed I threw up and had awful vomits, but the next one I rather relished it, and it did me a sight o' good, like an oyster does after ye 'ave been drinkin at night and take's tuppence worth of natives in the morning. Well, when I began snake-swallowing it was rather new, and I had it all my own way for a long time, but finally, lots of men began to swallow snakes, and coal swallowing was not as good as it used to be; so I took to ballad singing, Judy and I. By this time we had sixty pounds saved, and we were doing well, but I made the acquaintance of a lot of Doncaster men, who knew I had the money, and before I could say 'Jack Robinson,' the money was all gone. Judy was in her confinement then, and she took on so bad about it that she died in child-bed, and the kid as well, and I've been on the tramp ever since, and now I do an odd turn at anything that turns up, but mostly I sing ballads, and make sometimes a shilling a day, and sometimes eightpence and ninepence a day. Times have changed for me. Worse luck."
Here the snake-swallower's story ended.
"Slap-Up Peter, will you give us a song? and I'll give you a drink, me oul wiper," said the crippled Kicking Billy to the snake-swallower.
"Well, Billy, I don't mind if I do," said Slap-Up Peter, draining the tin skillet to the last greasy drop.