't holler; nextly, he pressed his finger
tips on my eye-balls, and they sunk right back into their sockets.

I tried to shake him off, and to yell, but I couldn't! Then I knew I was
"dun fur." Next came what a printer's devil would call a ---- blank.

I was skeered out of my seven senses, and when I cum to and tried to
recolect myself, I was like the old woman in the song who fell asleep,
and

"By came a pedlar and his name was Stout
And he cut her petticoats all round about;
He cut her petticoats up to her knees,
Which made the old woman begin for to freeze."

I was in the same predicament, for I was now only in my bare bones, and
knew I was a rolecking old skeleton.

Wall, it gin me an awful shock to find myself like a skull and
cross-bones on a tombstone, sittin' on my own coffin!

Presently I was grappled by a big worm with a hundred legs. He then sent
for his feller worms, and they licked me from skull to toe-jint. After I
had stood the lickin' as long as I could (they tickled so), I concluded
to run away, so I started on a full gallop, and arter I had run awhile,
where should I fetch up but in the vicinity of Vic's Palace. I know'd by
pussonal experience suthin' of the feelin' manner with which the British
public look upon the Royal Family, and a sensation of relief cum over my
mind as I thought if I once entered their ground no one dared foiler me.
So I gin a spring and leaped right atop of the middle chimny. Owin' to
private considerations, I did'nt mind the soot, but I clambered down, and
there I was, to my amazement, rite in the private apartments of the
Queen. She was sittin' at a table lookin' at a dogerotipe of Prince
Albert; and I walked straight up to her, not feel in' a bit afeared, and
making my manners, axed her if I didn't resemble the Prince?--rememberin'
that the preacher had kindly said over my coffin that "there was no
distinction in the grave."

I thought that as I was a pooty gay image of Death, I might remind her of
the "Prince Consort."

She looked up kinder sideways as I spoke, but she must have bin a leetle
hard o' hearing, for she shook her head.

Then I thought I'd try her on another tack. So I placed my hands on my
shakey knees, and bendin' over in this guise, so she could see me
plainly, while my teeth rattled in my skull as I shook my head at her and
growled:

"Haint you afeared of me, Madam?" With the pirsistent obstinacy of the
feminine gender, she refused to notice m