red the
Quartz Crusher; "kin he?" All ears were alert, particularly the very
long and hairy ones just rising above the railing of the speaker's
platform; for Jinny, having a feminine distrust of solitude and a
fondness for show, had followed her master to the meeting and had
insinuated herself upon the platform, where way was made for her with
that frontier courtesy always extended to her age and sex.

Colonel Starbottle, stertorous and purple, advanced to the railing.
There he unbuttoned his collar and laid his neckcloth aside, then with
his eye fixed on his antagonist he drew off his blue frock coat, and
thrusting one hand into his ruffled shirt front, and raising the other
to the dark canopy above him, he opened his vindictive lips. The
action, the attitude, were Starbottle's. But the voice was not. For
at that supreme moment, a bray--so profound, so appalling, so utterly
soul-subduing, so paralyzing that everything else sank to mere
insignificance beside it--filled woods, and sky, and air. For a moment
only the multitude gasped in speechless astonishment--it was a moment
only--and then the welkin roared with their shouts. In vain silence
was commanded, in vain Colonel Starbottle, with a ghastly smile,
remarked that he recognized in the interruption the voice and the
intellect of the opposition; the laugh continued, the more as it was
discovered that Jinny had not yet finished, and was still recurring to
her original theme. "Gentlemen," gasped Starbottle, "any attempt by
[Hee-haw! from Jinny] brutal buffoonery to restrict the right of free
speech to all [a prolonged assent from Jinny] is worthy only the
dastardly"--but here a diminuendo so long drawn as to appear a striking
imitation of the Colonel's own apoplectic sentences drowned his voice
with shrieks of laughter.

It must not be supposed that during this performance a vigorous attempt
was not made to oust Jinny from the platform. But all in vain.
Equally demoralizing in either extremity, Jinny speedily cleared a
circle with her flying hoofs, smashed the speaker's table and water
pitcher, sent the railing flying in fragments over the cheering crowd,
and only succumbed to two blankets, in which, with her head concealed,
she was finally dragged, half captive, half victor, from the field.
Even then a muffled and supplemental bray that came from the woods at
intervals drew half the crowd away and reduced the other half to mere
perfunctory hearers. The demo