The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-09-26
OLD TIME SNAKES.

IF. E. Huddle, in Through Mail Magazine. In the olden time, when the prairies o
 Illinois had not been fenced in, snakes
 were plentiful.
 In that day and age of the world
 women did not gather up their skirts and
 climb up on tho table if anybody mad.
 veriently said "mouse." They seized a
 rc'iing-pin, Sust-brush or stove hook, and looked calmly around over their shoulders
 a2 nch as to say:
 snow me the bloody monster Lei
 ane ,:t a crack at him with this, and then
 iei cn examine himself with a micro
 scope to see how much mouse there is ! lei. Show me the horrid brute and lei
 ne knock him out in one round"
 The serpents that infested the unfet.
 tered wastes of prairie. were bad. They
 were more numerous than blackbirds are
 now, and some of them were so poison.
 ous that it made mans leg swell and
 sent him screaming to the whisky jug to
 look at them. They roamed through the
 orchards and meadows and glided across
 the lawns and gardens many times every
 day, and when the members of the fam
 lily were gathered around the festal board
 at evening, the boy or girl that had not
 killed one or more snakes during the day,
 was set down as lazy-boDes and sent to
 bed without supper in dire disgrace, but
 often redeemed himself or herself as the
 case might be, by going to bed with a
 garter snake or two and hastily rising, taking it by the tail and jerking its head of whip-cracker CT fashion. ltwas not then an uncommon occurrence fer men and
 women to go to bed alone in the evening and awake in the morning to find rat tlesnake sharing his or her repose, and when a thrifty housewife made such a discovery as that, she did not allow her oedsellow to lie there and doze away the best part of the day in idleness. She got a hoe and yanked him out on the floor and then bruised his head while he mon- keyed around trying to bruise her heel, just to carry out the programme of Gene sis.
 Old Solomon Snarman was practical joker to certain extent, and when he re- moved with his wife, Betsy, from York state to Eelinoy," he was more or less surprised at the amount of time he was obliged to devote to snake killing. He got to be monomaniac on snakes, and they entered into his conversation by day and his dreams by night until he could not talk or think of anything else. At last it came to such pass that poor Bet sey's life was one uninterrupted round of snakes. While bending over her wash tub, her spouse would stealthily approach her from behind and yell snakes l" at the top of his voice, but she whirled round and slapped him with handful of soap. suds and then he would become melancholy and have snake nightmare that night | for want of good, hearty laugh. Under his conditions of melancholia, he grew thin and wretched, and his digestion be- gan failing, so he resolved within himself that un.ess he could have fun at Betsey's expense, he would gradually pine away and die, so he went to the barn and talk Ing his black-snake whip out of the wagon concealed it between the sheets of their bed, and when Betsey's bare feet touched | she whip, and she stopped and breathed hard, Solomon sprapg out of bed and yelled snakesp at the top of his voice, and then they slowly turned down the covers, and Betsey ,rembled while they made the discovery that it was the whip and not snake, and then she chased Solomon all around the place and he had 50 much fun that he felt himself coming back from the tomb at rousing gait.
 To-day, Solomon is in his grave. He aas been there several years. He went n a hurry and several years before he would have gone if he had not put his whip in the bed. He awoke one night and felt something cold gliding across his feet, so he sprang out of bed with the and grimly slid out of bed on the oppo- site side, aud then they turned up the light and turned down the covers, and Betsey, remembering her whip experi- ence, seized the black thing that lay there and aayed Solomon with it until he lay on the floor bleating like a sheep, for he knew it was genuine snake, while Bet sey thought it another joke of his with the whip. He always seemed sad afterward, and in about a wear he died a victim of |