I was also shown a jagged hole in a high board fence, which, it is said, the “Boy” made one night while going home from a neighboring saloon.
It seems he had some trouble with a companion before leaving the saloon, and seeing his shadow dogging his steps, mistook it for the substance of his late antagonist; very naturally presuming that his intentions were anything but friendly, he turned hastily around and dissipated the obnoxious shadow by knocking it about fifteen feet into the garden.
A SCIENTIFIC OPENING.
The fence rattled and shook around the whole lot under the terrible blow. He made a hole in the boards through which a large goat could readily jump without sacrificing any of its hair by the performance, and permanently injured a good-sized pear tree that stood inside the enclosure, about three feet distant. The concussion was terrible. A couple of turkeys that happened to be roosting in the tree at the time dropped from their limb as though shot through the head with a needle-gun. Never afterwards could they be induced to roost upon anything further from the ground than the cross-bar of a saw-horse or the handles of a wheelbarrow.
No doubt the town at one time had great expectations, as it formerly was the capital of the State. It is now a capital joke to see a person undertaking to walk through the town in the winter season, without faith strong enough or feet broad enough to support him upon the surface of the oceans of mud he will find himself gazing wistfully across.
On my way down a man was pointed out to me on the boat who is said to be the meanest man in his county. My informant assured me that when the mean individual’s wife died last year, he borrowed a pair of forceps from the dentist at Benicia, and extracted all her gold-filled teeth. And on the morning prior to her funeral he sat upon the door-step, hammer in hand, with a flat-iron upon his knees, cracking the teeth like English walnuts, and with a sewing awl extracting the filling from the cavities.
During my journey I didn’t cultivate that man’s acquaintance. He is a person to stand away from, especially when clouds are charged with electricity.
