Well, one afternoon he got the gun, and he and I went among the mountains to hunt for something. Pretty soon we saw a squirrel, but Bill was so intent on killing a bear, a raccoon, or some large animal, that he scorned to shoot a squirrel. So we went on, and met with various kinds of small game, but none worthy of the attention of my heroic friend. We proceeded for some time, and finding no large game, Bill determined to shoot a squirrel if he could meet with one. But no squirrel was now to be seen. He gradually lowered his pretensions, until, at length, he was so anxious to shoot something, that he drew up at a wren, and was on the point of discharging his piece at it, when the bird flew away, and we saw no more of it.
It was now evening, and we were at a considerable distance from home. We walked along as fast as we could, and Bill, who was never out of spirits, beguiled the time by telling what he would have done, if something had fallen in his way. “If a wolf had come along in the woods,” said Bill, drawing up the old piece, and taking aim at a mullen stalk, “and if he had come near enough, how I would have peppered him!”
Just at that instant we heard a rustling sound in a meadow, that we were passing. It was too dark to see distinctly, but Bill peeped through the rail-fence, and, saying to me with an emphatic whisper, “Be still; I see one!” he cocked the gun and brought the heavy old piece to a level with his eye. After a long, portentous aim, during which I winked so hard as nearly to put my eye out—whang! it went, and Bill was stretched backward upon the grass in an instant, by the kicking of the gun! He very soon got up, however, and jumped over the fence to pick up his game. He was gone but a minute, and when he came back he only said, “Well, I peppered him!” “Peppered what?” said I. “No matter,” said he; and that was all I could get out of him. But the next morning one of Deacon Kellogg’s cows was found in a thicket, shot through the head, and dead as a hatchet! Bill was obliged to confess, and my uncle settled the affair by paying thirteen dollars and forty-two cents. It was not till several years after, that Bill would tell me what he took the cow for when he fired at her. He then said, that his fancy was so full of shooting a wolf, and he was so ravenous to shoot something, that he really took the poor old cow to be a wolf, or a creature very like one.
The next event of my life, that seems worth recording, was very interesting to me. But I must reserve this story for another chapter.
(To be continued.)
Origin of Words and Phrases.
A tailor of Samarcand, a city of the East, chanced to live near a gate that led to the public burying-place; and, being a fanciful fellow, he hung up by his shopboard a little earthen pot, into which he dropped a small stone, whenever a corpse was carried by. At the end of every moon, he counted the contents of the pot, and so knew the number of the deceased. At length, the tailor died himself, and, some time after, a person unacquainted with his decease, observing his shop to be deserted, inquired what had become of him. “Oh,” said a neighbor, “the tailor has gone to pot, as well as the rest!” And this is the origin of the phrase, “to go to pot.”
Few words have so remarkable a history as the familiar word “bankrupt.” The money-changers of Italy had, it is said, benches or stalls in the burse or exchange, in former times, and at these they conducted their ordinary business. When any of them fell back in the world, and became insolvent, his bench was broken, and the name of broken bench, or banco rotto, was given him. When the word was first adopted into the English, it was nearer the Italian than it now is; being bankerout, instead of bankrupt.
Though any man can put his pony to the canter, few are able, in general, to explain the word by which they designate the animal’s pace. The term canter is a corruption, or rather an abbreviation, of a Canterbury gallop, which signifies the hand-gallop of an ambling horse. The origin of the phrase is as old as the days of the Canterbury pilgrims, when votaries came at certain seasons to the shrine of Thomas à Becket in that city, from all parts of the nation. Mail-coaches and railroads being then unknown, the pilgrims travelled on horseback, and from their generally using easy, ambling nags, the pace at which they got over the ground came to be called a Canterbury gallop, and afterwards a canter.