"Was you ever in a real heavy gale of wind?" "Warn't I," said I; "the fust time I returned from England it blew great guns all the voyage, one gale after another, and the last always wuss than the one before. It carried away our sails as fast as we bent them." "That's nothing unusual," said Cutter; "there are worse things than that at sea." "Well, I'll tell," sais I, "what it did; and if that ain't an uncommon thing, then my name ain't Sam Slick. It blew all the hair off my dog, except a little tuft atween his ears."
AN APPROPRIATE GIFT.—341.
The New York Atlas says:—"Judge Kelly and other citizens of Philadelphia have presented a medal to President Lincoln. The medallion has the bust of Washington on one side, and that of Mr. Lincoln on the other. The peculiar felicity of this design is apparent to the most obtuse. Washington was a patriot and a hero, and Lincoln is unquestionably the reverse. It seems somewhat superfluous, however, to strike a medal to perpetuate the knowledge of a fact so indisputable."
THE CROOKED STICK.—342
Maria, just at twenty, swore
That no man less than six feet four
Should be her chosen one;
At thirty, she was glad to fix
A spouse exactly four feet six,
As better far than none.
A SPARE GIRL.—343.
"I never," says Sam Slick, "see so spare a gal since I was raised. Pharaoh's lean kine warn't the smallest part of a circumstance to her. She was so thin, she actilly seemed as if she would have to lean agin the wall to support herself when she scolded, and I had to look twice at her before I could see her at all, for I warn't sure she warn't her own shadow."
NEW WAY TO AFFIX A STAMP.—344.
"You remind me," says I, "of a feller in Slickville, when the six-cent letter-stamps came in fashion. He licked the stamp so hard, he took all the gum off, and it wouldn't stay on nohow he could fix it, so what does he do but put a pin through it, and writes on the letter, 'Paid, if the darned thing will only stick.'"—Sam Slick.