BUST-HEAD WHISKEY.
For two days the quiet of the Rising Sun Tavern, in the quaint little town of Shearsville, Ohio, was disturbed by a drunken Democratic member of the Pennsylvania Legislature, who visited the town in order to address what he hoped would turn out to be the assembled multitude of copperheads, but which proved after all no great snakes!
For two days this worthless vagabond insulted travellers stopping at the tavern, until at last the landlord's wife, a woman of some intelligence, determined to have her revenge, since no man on the premises had pluck enough to give the sot the thrashing he so well merited.
On the third day, after a very severe night's carouse on bust-head whiskey, the Pennsylvanian appeared at the breakfast table, looking sadly the worse for wear, and having an awful headache. The landlady having previously removed the only looking glass in the tavern—one hanging in the barroom—said to the beast as he sat down to table:
'Poor man! oh, what is the matter with your face? It is terribly swollen, and your whole head too. Can't I do something for you? send for the doctor, or'—
The legislator, who was in a state of half-besottedness, listened with sharp ears to this remark, but believing the landlady was only making fun of him, interrupted her with—
'There ain't nothin' the matter with my head. I'm all right; only a little headache what don't 'mount to nothing.'
But a man who sat opposite to him at table, and who had his clue from the landlady, said with an alarmed look—
'I say, mister, I don't know it's any of my business, but I'll be hanged for a horse thief, if your head ain't swelled up twicet its nat'ral size. You'd better do something for it, I'm thinking.'