"Den she wan't no chicken when she died, I know dat.—Ninety-six, ninety-seben, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one, two, free, foah, five, five, six, seben, eight,—dar one hundred and eight nice fresh eggs,—jess nine dozen, and here am one moah egg in case I have discounted myse'f."
Old Mose went on his way rejoicing. A few days afterward Mrs. Barton said to her husband,
"I am afraid we will have to discharge Matilda. I am satisfied that she steals the milk and eggs. I am positive about the eggs, for I bought them day before yesterday, and now about half of them are gone. I stood right there, and heard old Moses count them myself, and there were nine dozen."—Texas Siftings.
THE FALL.
"Down, down, down, ten thousand fathoms deep."—Count Fathom.
Who does not know that dreadful gulf, where Niagara falls,
Where eagle unto eagle screams, to vulture vulture calls;
Where down beneath, despair and death in liquid darkness grope,
And upward on the foam there shines a rainbow without hope?
While, hung with clouds of fear and doubt, the unreturning wave
Suddenly gives an awful plunge, like life into the grave;
And many a hapless mortal there hath dived to vale or bliss;
One—only one—hath ever lived to rise from that abyss!
O heaven! it turns me now to ice with chill of fear extreme,
To think of my frail bark adrift on that tumultuous stream !
In vain, with desperate sinews, strung by love of life and light,
I urged that coffin, my canoe, against the current's might;
On—on—still on—direct for doom, the river rushed in force,
And fearfully the stream of time raced with it in its course.
My eyes I closed I dared not look the way towards the goal;
But still I viewed the horrid close, and dreamt it in my soul.
Plainly, as through transparent lids, I saw the fleeting shore,
And lofty trees, like winged things, flit by forevermore!
