A slight contraction of the lips,
Which brought the pointed teeth in sight,
And they had passed to endless night.
Even as I write (ten o’clock A. M.) they are lying in the yard as they fell, a terrible illustration of sudden transition from noisy debate to silent repose. There they lie, to compare small things with great, like a pair of shipwrecked lovers, who have clung to each other through fire and water, and at last have reached the wreck-strewed beach in body, but not in spirit.
The gentleman who owns the yard has just been out looking at them. After silently surveying the dead for a long time in silence, he walked away without disturbing them, pathetically murmuring the Latin motto, “Requies-cat in pace.”
A TRIP TO THE MOUNTAINS.
I have been taking a flying trip over the Sierras about which the poet so mellifluously sings. There were many beautiful scenes presented during that trip, but abler pens than mine have described them fully, and have done them justice, so I will not attempt to set forth their various charms. It is not my forte, anyway, and I am free to confess the fact. Enough for me to describe the excellent lunch which I had the good fortune to have along with me, and to speak plainly, I enjoyed it the most of anything I saw during my trip. It was no ordinary lunch, however. The back-bone of it was a nicely-roasted chicken, which reflected great credit upon both the poulterer and the kind-hearted young lady who volunteered to see it through the oven. Ah, that brisk little lady can prepare a dish fit to set before the gods. If that is not doing her justice, tell me what more can be said, and I will pile it higher. She is worthy of it.
The virtues of that fowl live in my memory yet. It was good. If you could meet an old lady that was a passenger in that car—not the one with the bunion on her left foot and the crockery teeth, who mistook me for a minister, but the mild old lady with glasses that sat opposite me—she would tell you the same. She knows. Bless her gentle heart! If she doesn’t, I would like to know who does. She partook of the fowl. I saw her looking wistfully upon it as I dismembered it, and, though I say it myself, I am not greedy, by any means, so I offered her the juicy neck. Did she take it? Ask, rather, if a cat that had fasted a week would take a mouse if she got between him and his hole? As old Shylock said, “Are you answered?” She was no novice at picking the neck of a fowl, either. She manipulated it in a manner that proved to me clearly she had a perfect knowledge of its construction. It was not long—perhaps ten seconds—before she had it picked as bare as a corkscrew. She did it with such ease, too; and that’s what got me. She kept it revolving as rapidly as a squirrel does the cylinder in his cage. She had but one front tooth left in her upper jaw. The intelligent mind will no doubt immediately picture forth a long tooth; and the intelligent mind, in so doing, portrays the incisor correctly. It was, indeed, a long tooth, but it was just the thing she needed for the business before her. It seemed to be specially made for it, as it fitted into every depression or notch in the neck as nicely as a key into a lock. It ran around between the vertebræ like a turner’s chisel, throwing the small particles of nutriment far back against the roof of her mouth. It did me good to see her play around that fowl’s neck. I grew young again while beholding the busy scene, and actually regretted that a chicken did not have two necks, as well as two legs, that I might repeat the generous donation, and see the pleasing scene enacted again. As it was, I won golden opinions from the old lady.
NECK TO NECK.