A SNAKE STORY.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4965, 8 December 1884, Page 2

A SNAKE STORY.

So many snake stories have been pub* lished by our American cousins in the Southern press that every Northerner who crosses the Ohio river begins to look for serpen's. A Michigan man, who was taking a brief trip last fall down into Sauland, reached his destination without having seen a snake, and he felt so glad over it that he could not keep his feelings to himself. At the hotel were several guests, who determined on a joke at his expense. A darkey in town, who had several samples of stuffed snakes, was interviewed to the extent of half a dollar, and a plan was perfected to give the Michigander a terrible scare. Snakes had been talked of for a day or two to get the man's feelings properly worked up, and one evening he was invited to take a seat on the verandah for a smoke.

His chair was so placed that a

boy could creep up and deposit the specimen under it, and when this had been done someone began to talk about the way snakes sometimes crept into houses. " One evening last summer, as a

lot of us sat out here," observed one in

the crowd, " a rattler about 7ft. long crept up that post over there, dropped on the floor, and such a time you never saw." Every man bent over to look under his chair, as if suspecting the presence of a

snake. The Wolverine caught sight of

the serpent under his, and he slowly rose up, pulled the chair away, kicked the

reptile clear over the railing of the verandah into the street, and sat down with the re*

mark, " Well, I s'pose I'll get used to it after living here awhile, but just now the sight of a snake makes me rather nervous. Who tells the next story ?"