They tried hard, but they couldn’t get the Yankee tourist to admit that he saw anything in Europe that could beat things at home. When he passed from Italy to Switzerland, they asked him whether he had noticed the magnificence of the Alps, and he acknowledged, “Waal, now, come to think of it, I guess I did pass some risin’ ground.” And before this they had showed him Vesuvius, and asked him what he thought of that, and whether there was anything in his country could equal it. And he said, “Pooh! Why, we’ve got a waterfall in my country so big that if you had it here and turned it into your burning mountain, it would put out all that fire in just six seconds.”
An American-born Irishman paid a visit to the home of his ancestors, and they proudly showed him the lakes of Killarney. “Killarney, is it?” said he. “We’ve got lakes in America so big that you could take all the lakes in Ireland an’ throw ’em in, and it wouldn’t raise the water an inch. An’ as fer yer city o’ Dublin—let me tell ye, me friend, we’ve got States over there so big that ye could put Dublin away in one corner of ’em, an’ ye’d never know it was there, except for the smell o’ the whiskey.”
These honored citizens could well appreciate the toast—“The United States: bounded on the east by primeval chaos; on the north by the Aurora borealis; on the west by the precession of the equinoxes, and on the south by the Day of Judgment!”
FARM ACCIDENTS
A Larimer County farmer lost a valuable cow in a very unusual and distressing manner. The animal, in rummaging through a summer kitchen, found and swallowed an old umbrella and a cake of yeast. The yeast, fermenting in the poor beast’s stomach, raised the umbrella and she died in great agony.
The same day another accident happened. A pan of cream had been left standing in the spring house, and a frog had fallen in and couldn’t get out. He swam and swam around and around, but could get no foothold to climb out. So he stopped swimming and took to kicking instead. He kicked and he kicked till he had kicked the cream into butter, and then climbed out readily.
A WONDERFUL CLIMATE
Dan Marble was once strolling along the wharves in Boston, when he met a tall, gaunt man, a digger from California, and got into conversation with him about that wonderful State.
“Healthy climate, I suppose?” inquired Dan.
“Healthy? Well, I reckon I should say so, stranger. Why, d’ye know, out there you can choose any kind o’ climate you like, hot or cold or mejum, an’ that, too, without traveling more’n fifteen minutes. They’ve got weather on tap out there, so to speak, sizz or frizz, accordin’ to taste an’ preference. There’s a mountain there—the Sary Nevady, they call it—one side hot an’ one side cold. Well—get up on top o’ that mountain with a double-barrel gun, an’ you can, without movin’, kill either winter or summer game, jest as you wish.”