e of a country gentleman
and a justice of the peace, the spectacle was scandalously disreputable.
It was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right in the middle;
through its four socketless eyes, neighboured by the nettle, peered
the thistle,--the thistle! a forest of thistles!--and, to complete the
degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the donkey of
an itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very act of
taking his luncheon out of the eyes and jaws of--THE PARISH STOCKS.

The squire looked as if he could have beaten the parson; but as he was
not without some slight command of temper, and a substitute was luckily
at hand, he gulped down his resentment, and made a rush--at the donkey!

Now the donkey was hampered by a rope to its fore-feet, to the which was
attached a billet of wood, called technically "a clog," so that it had
no fair chance of escape from the assault its sacrilegious luncheon had
justly provoked. But the ass turning round with unusual nimbleness at
the first stroke of the cane, the squire caught his foot in the rope,
and went head over heels among the thistles. The donkey gravely bent
down, and thrice smelt or sniffed its prostrate foe; then, having
convinced itself that it had nothing further to apprehend for the
present, and very willing to make the best of the reprieve, according
to the poetical admonition, "Gather your rosebuds while you may," it
cropped a thistle in full bloom, close to the ear of the squire,--so
close, indeed, that the parson thought the ear was gone; and with the
more probability, inasmuch as the squire, feeling the warm breath of the
creature, bellowed out with all the force of lungs accustomed to give a
View-hallo!

"Bless me, is it gone?" said the parson, thrusting his person between
the ass and the squire.

"Zounds and the devil!" cried the squire, rubbing himself, as he rose to
his feet.

"Hush!" said the parson, gently. "What a horrible oath!"

"Horrible oath! If you had my nankeens on," said the squire, still
rubbing himself, "and had fallen into a thicket of thistles, with a
donkey's teeth within an inch of your ear--"

"It is not gone, then?" interrupted the parson.

"No,--that is, I think not," said the squire, dubiously; and he clapped
his hand to the organ in question. "No! it is not gone!"

"Thank Heaven!" said the good clergyman, kindly. "Hum," growled the
squire, who was now once more engaged in rubbing himself. "Th