"'Go,' said I to the officer who was with us, 'and reckon the stripes of that ribbon; see if they are thirteen!' (with an emphasis I spoke the word)—and he went, too!
"'Yes, they are thirteen, upon my word, madam.'
"'Do hand it me.' He did so; I took it, and found that it was narrow black ribbon, carefully wound round a broad white. I returned it to its place on the shelf.
"'Madam,' said the merchant, 'you can buy the black and white too, and tack them in stripes.'
"By no means, sir; I would not have them slightly tacked, but firmly united.' The above mentioned officers sat on the counter kicking their heels. How they gaped at me when I said this! But the merchant laughed heartily."
SUCCESSFUL DARING.
——He stopped the fliers.
Shakspeare's Coriolanus.
Many years ago, while a stage was passing through Temple, New Hampshire, the driver's seat gave way, and himself and a gentleman seated with him, were precipitated to the ground. The latter was killed. The horses took fright at the noise, and ran a mile or more at full speed. Meanwhile, Miss Abigail Brown, the only inside passenger and now the sole occupant of the stage, endeavored, by speaking soothingly, to stop the horses. At length they came to a high hill, when their speed began to slacken, and Miss Brown, having previously opened the door and taken a convenient position to alight, sprang out. Not content to save her own life, but bent on acting the part of a heroine, she rushed forward, seized the leaders, turned them out of the road, and held them fast till persons whom she had passed and who had tried to stop the flying steeds, came to her relief. Had this feat, trifling as it may seem, been performed by the wife of some Roman dignitary, she would have been apotheosized and her biography inserted in Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.