tion to the general rule of moderate drinking; but I will
tell you a story that I think exactly illustrates his case. Some years
ago, when I was a boy, my father had two negro servants, named Uncle
Sambo and Snowball. Near our house there was a branch of one of the
large fresh-water lakes which swarmed with fish, and it was the duty of
Snowball to go every morning to catch sufficient for the breakfast of
the household. The way Snowball usually caught his fish was by making
them drunk by feeding them with Indian corn-meal mixed with strong
whisky and rolled into balls. When these whisky balls were thrown into
the water the fish came and ate them readily, but after they had
swallowed a few they became helplessly drunk, turning on their backs and
allowing themselves to be caught, so that in a very short time Snowball
would return with his basket full of fish. But as I said, there is no
rule without an exception, and one morning proved that there is also an
exception in the matter of fish becoming drunk. As usual Snowball went
to the lake with an allowance of whisky balls, and spying a fine big
fish with a large flat head, he dropped a ball in front of it, which it
at once ate and then another, and another, and so on till all the whisky
balls in Snowball's basket were in the stomach of this queer fish, and
still it showed no signs of becoming drunk, but kept wagging its tail
and looking for more whisky balls. On this Snowball returned home and
called old Uncle Sambo to come and see this wonderful fish which had
swallowed nearly a peck of whisky balls and still was not drunk. When
old Uncle Sambo set eyes on the fish, he exclaimed, "O Snowball,
Snowball! you foolish boy, you will never be able to make that fish
drunk with your whisky balls. That fish could live in a barrel of whisky
and not get drunk. That fish, my son, is called a mullet-head: it has
got no brains." And that accounts,' said Mr. Gough, turning to the
brewer's drayman, 'for our friend here being able for twenty years to
drink a gallon of beer and a pint of whisky daily and never become
drunk.' And so, my chums," said Handy Andy, "if you will apply the same
reasoning to the cases of Sergeant Macpherson and Captain Waterman I
think you will come to the correct conclusion why the fright did not
upset the intellect of Sergeant Macpherson." We all joined in the laugh
at Handy Andy's story, and none more heartily than the butt of it, Sandy
Macpherson himself.

But