The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-06-21 00:00:00

AMERIC4N ROMANCE.

All our readers have, doubtless, heard of the great
American sea serpent, measuring from four to ten miles
in length, and often seen moving through the waters at
the rate of about forty or fifty miles per minute. This
story has been a standard romance with brother Jonathan
for many years. The fiction and the serpent are of the
same size, and the credulity of those who believe in it fully
equal to both. The truth is, that what passes here in
England for a monstrous falsehood, passes in America
for wit. He is deemed the cleverest fellow in the
" states" who can trump up the most egregious bouncer
after the manner of Baron Munchausen. In fact that
historian appears to have formed the taste of our repub-
lican friends, and their whole study is to excel him in his
profound art. Nimrod, the Kentuckian, can wade the
Mississippi—beat a man into the earth with one blow of
a sledge hammer—grin a wild cat into mortal convul-
sions—and lick all the tigers, wolves, bears, hvenes,
and zebras, in a managerie. This being the model of
American wit, beyond which they have no other ge-
nuine notions of humour, it is not surprising that we
should find occasional imitations in the New York pa-
pers. We take the following from the New York Ga-
zette of the 23d of May.
SNAKE STORY.—Messrs. Mack and Andrus,—lf you should
think the circumstance I am about to relate sufficiently curious
to deserve a place in your paper, it is at your service. On Sa-
turday afternoon I was engaged with two of my sons and a
hired man, Reuben Havens, in clearing a small piece for a
summer crop. Havens cut down a dry stump of a tree, about
twenty-five feet high; as it was falling I perceived a striped
snake, about two feet long,_ crossing a stone about fifteen feet
from the foot of the tree. The tree fell on the snake, and owing
to its being a little flat on the lower side, or to the shape of the
stone, the snake was cut in three pieces, as smooth as it could
have been done with a knife; the middle part remained mashed
under the tree. If it had not been witnessed by four of us, and
I had not the evidence of the fact to prove it, I would not dare
to tell what followed. The part of the snake which had the
head on, in about two minutes, crawled under the tree to the
tail end, which had worked itself to about a foot from the stone,
in apparent agony. The head part immediately took the other
part into its month, and fairly carried it under the stone, which
was fiat, and about three feet over. All this was so singular
that I had the curiosity to make one of the boys watch the
stone until we quitted work at night. About three hours after-
wards, when we chopped up the tree, and with a handspike
lifted the stone, we found the snake with the two cut ends
joined together, and able to attempt making his escape. We
however caught it. The cut was not entirely healed, but we
carried it home, and I now have it well and sound'in a box, for
any body to see, at my house, about a mile from the village.
'rhe cut is entirely healed, and leaves a ring around the snake;
and, what is curious, the ends of the streaks on the two parts
do not match.
Ithica, April 30, 18a3.
MATTHEW SEELY.