alize its extraordinary celerity, and was
lost in admiration of its grace. To this day the impression remains
that it was a slow, deliberate movement, the ram--for it was that
animal--being upborne by some power other than its own impetus, and
supported through the successive stages of its flight with infinite
tenderness and care. My eyes followed its progress through the air
with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by contrast with my former
terror of its approach by land. Onward and upward the noble animal
sailed, its head bent down almost between its knees, its fore-feet
thrown back, its hinder legs trailing to rear like the legs of a
soaring heron.

"At a height of forty or fifty feet, as fond recollection presents it
to view, it attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant
stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without altering the
relative position of its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and
steeper course with augmenting velocity, passed immediately above me
with a noise like the rush of a cannon shot and struck my poor uncle
almost squarely on the top of the head! So frightful was the impact
that not only the man's neck was broken, but the rope too; and the
body of the deceased, forced against the earth, was crushed to pulp
beneath the awful front of that meteoric sheep! The concussion
stopped all the clocks between Lone Hand and Dutch Dan's, and
Professor Davidson, a distinguished authority in matters seismic, who
happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained that the vibrations
were from north to southwest.

"Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in point of artistic atrocity
my murder of Uncle William has seldom been excelled."

OIL OF DOG

My name is Boffer Bings. I was born of honest parents in one of the
humbler walks of life, my father being a manufacturer of dog-oil and
my mother having a small studio in the shadow of the village church,
where she disposed of unwelcome babes. In my boyhood I was trained to
habits of industry; I not only assisted my father in procuring dogs
for his vats, but was frequently employed by my mother to carry away
the debris of her work in the studio. In performance of this duty I
sometimes had need of all my natural intelligence for all the law
officers of the vicinity were opposed to my mother's business. They
were not elected on an opposition ticket, and the matter had never
been made a political issue; it just happened so. My