The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-09-01
FREE COINAGE IN ILLINOIS.
Shade and Fish Stories without
Either Parity or Ratio.

From the Chester llill Tribune.
The fellows about the court house are a
set Of George Washingtous in one respect
they never tell lie, and anything told
having an appearance or even suspected
of an untruth brings down upon the head
of the offender the wrath Of the whole
outfit We went down the other evening
To unload lot Of fish lies on the gang,
but could not get the floor and had To sit
and listen TO a few cold facts which were
being narrated Sam CrOzier was relat-
ing snake story, about a Joint
snake he saw once. He and a friend
We're going along the road and met
up with one of them. He struck it with
a stick and it few to pieces. Concluding
from the way the reptiles anatomy was
wrecked that they had found rare
specimen of the snake tribe, and having
heard that snakes of this brand could
put themselves together they, decided To
wait and watch. Sure enough the frag-
ments with the head on soon settled down
to business and proceeded TO hunt up the
balance of its cadaver. 1t soon found
three or four pieces and after licking the
dirt off the ends of the sections, hitched
on to them. Sam says he did not see the
entire Job completed, but he is satisfied
from the work he did see that the snake
completed the Job in a satisfactory man
ner. No one disputed the story nor even
expressed doubt, for sam said he could
prove the story easily by his friend-but
his friend happened to be dead.
Hoop snakes naturally folly joint snakes
and John Buatte knew of two cases where
this fearful snake got in his work One
was when Phil Murphy was driving down
the Kaskaskia road and a hoop snake
came rolling towards him. 1t did not get
out of his way, but Strnck the tongue of
his wagon. The poison worked so rapidly
that in less than five minutes every wheel
of the vehicle was paralyzed and refused
to turn on the axles, and the aXles them
selves were swollen to twice their size
Another one was that farmer was out
grubbing when hoop snake came rolling
toward him He stuck the handle of the
grubbing hoe towards it and the snake
struck the end of it with his horn The
poison instantly ran down the handle into
the eye of the hoe, which rapidly swelled
up and burst
Then the silence which fell upon the
group becoming oppressive, and not to be
outdone, we told how we went down to
Mary's river that day with a ball of
Irvine and a few grasshoppers and, with
Jim Wassall, raked in the fish how we
would tie a hopper on the end of the
string how fish would catch on and we
would tow him up the bank, break off
piece of Irvine, tie IL to stick and stick
it down in the ground, and how the fish
would lie there and smile; what lot of
them we had, and how they kept coming
until the whole ball of Irvine was used
up; how we pulled up the sticks,
gathered the loose ends of string together
and started for town, the fish fol-
lowing contentedly until we met Frank
Grain on Patton Branch bridge, and he
told us that George Allison, Charlie Nc
Pheeters and Adam Gerlach were coming
out; and then every pesky fish let go of
his hopper and fiounced and Topped down
into the water-wanted to have some fun
with the boys by stealing the bait from
the hooks without running any risk of
being caught. We managed, by hustling
right lively, to stop enough Of them, prin-
cipally black and striped bass, for
couple of meals for our families, but the
balance are probably at their old stamp
teur fishermen And the meeting then
adjourned