Coming up to his dog, and looking in the direction of the animal’s eye, he saw, about eight feet from the ground, his stray hat! He reached up to it with some difficulty, and took it down, while a smile of satisfaction covered his face. But his smile was soon changed to a gaze of horror—for, on looking into the hat, there was an enormous black snake, coiled up, and seeming to think himself quite at home! Soon, however, the creature lifted his head, brandished his forked tongue, and showed signs of battle.
The doctor threw down the hat, and Watch fell upon the snake. He took him by the middle, and shook him so violently that the reptile was dead in a few seconds. The doctor now took his hat, and rode home in triumph. The hat, it seems, had been borne upon the gale, at least half a mile, and then had lodged upon the bushes. The serpent thought it a convenient dwelling, and took up his lodging there, by no means expecting to be so rudely turned out of house and home.
Neatness is a cheap substitute for ornament, and it bestows a charm upon the poorest which diamonds cannot give to the wealthy.
Yellow Hair.
It appears that the women of old Rome were fond of yellow hair, and it is found that they were accustomed to turn it of this color by saffron, and by long sitting, daily, in the sun; others, instead of saffron, sometimes used medicated sulphur.
This art of changing their hair with saffron, was called crocuphantea. Tertullian, observing this artifice of the women of his time, told them that they were ashamed of their country, and would be Gaulish or Germanic women, so much did they disguise themselves. St. Cyprian and St. Jerome, with Tertullian, pronounced the seeking by art to procure red-tinted hair, as presaging to the person who sought it, the fire and red flames of hell.
Galen affirms that in his time numbers of women died with the headache; neither could there any remedy be applied to this evil, because they stood a long time bareheaded in the sun, to render their hair yellow; and he reports that for the same cause some of them lost their hair and became bald, and were reduced to Ovid’s remedy for that defect, either to borrow other women’s hair, or to ransack the graves of the dead for a dishonest supply.
Tertullian, speaking on this subject, says, that women were punished for this their folly, for that by reason of their long stay in the sun, their heads were often most grievously attacked with the headache; and it seems, when this vanity was grown habitual to them, it degenerated into dotage; for Lucian very satirically derides an old woman, who, notwithstanding she was seventy years of age, yet would she have her hair of a yellow tincture; he exhorts her to desist from her folly; for though she could color her silver hair, yet she could not recall her youth!