The gasp of a cow told the story, while the balance of uncertainty, as to whether I was to fall backwards or forwards, gave me leisure to listen. With the ten legs under me actuated by three different conceptions of the crisis—the cow crossways, the horse for proceeding, and I for retreating—there was a very miscellaneous scramble, for an instant. My horse fortunately recovered his footing without a fall—but whether we had slid to earth over the horns or the tail of the animal that had lifted us, the discreet belly of my horse shows to the inquisitive daylight no sign. As the reclining cow commonly rises first behind, the declivity for us was doubtless towards the head—though the improbability that a gentleman and his horse would ever travel over the horns of old Smith's cow, the most vicious animal in the neighborhood, without a scratch, makes it likely again that we dismounted over the tail. Either way "very happy," of course; for, with so close a shave upon a cow-tastrophe, I should not stand upon ceremony in the dark.
With my neighbor, last evening, the conversation naturally fell upon the perils in our daily experience; and he, having passes his life (and accumulated a very snug property) by varying his farming with shad-fishing in the season, steamboat-piloting when they run through the ice in the winter, stopping of drift timber and shooting of ducks, has a truly amphibious knowledge of the Hudson and its
