pped her ole eyes on my
inwention, she roared reight eout, 'O! de _Lud_, ef dar ain't one de ole
Virginny _spinnin' wheels!_' I kinder had bus'ness somewheres else
'beout that time! I took with a leaving!"

A Dreadful State of Excitement.

A retrospective view of some ten or fifteen years, brings up a wonderful
"heap of notions," which at their birth made quite a different sensation
from that which their "bare remembrance" would seem to sanction now. The
statement made in a "morning paper" before us, of a fine horse being
actually scared stone and instantaneously dead, by a roaring and hissing
locomotive, brings to mind "a circumstance," which though it did not
exactly _do our knitting_, it came precious near the climax!

Some years ago, upon what was then considered the "frontier" of
Missouri, we chanced to be laid up with a "game leg," in consequence of
a performance of a bullet-headed mule that we were endeavoring to coerce
at the end of a corn stalk, for his "intervention" in a fodder stack to
which he could lay no legitimate claim. About two miles from our
"lodgings" was a store, a "grocery," shotecary pop, boots, hats,
gridirons, whiskey, powder and shot, &c., &c., and the post office.
About three times a week, we used to hobble down to this modern ark, to
read the news, see what was going on down in the world, and--pass a few
hours with the proprietor of the store, who chanced to be a man with
whom we had had a former acquaintance "in other climes." Well, one day,
we dropped down to the store, and found pretty much all the men
folks--and they were not numerous around there, the houses or cabins
being rather scattering--getting ready to go down the river (Missouri)
some ten miles, to see a notorious desperado "stretch hemp." My friend
Captain V----, the storekeeper, was about to go along too, and proposed
that we should mount and accompany him, or--stay and tend store. We
accepted the latter proposition, as we were in no travelling kelter, and
had no taste for performances on the tight rope. Having officiated for
Captain V---- on several former occasions, we had the run of his
"grocery" and _postal_ arrangements quite fluent enough to take charge
of all the trade likely to turn up that day; so the captain and his
friends started, promising a return before sunset.

One individual, living some seven miles up the road, called for his
newspaper, and got his jug filled, spent a couple of hours with us--put