The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-06-24


 was first tc drink all of the raw whisky you could get hold of. Or if, within ten minutes after being bit ten. you clamped upon the wound the still quivering halves of a young chicken, which, while alive, had been split open with hatchet or a knife, 1 there was chance for you. | Lacking either of these cures or both of them, you must expire in torment. The bitten part would swell enormously; the poison, would rack you with hideous pains; then 1 swiftly it would reach your heart | and you were gone.
 | Every sort of snake was tricky and guileful, but the moccasin of the l low grounds the most sc of all Kill a moccasin and spare its mate. and the mate would track you for miles, set on vengeance.
 It was the habit of the moccasin when meat was scarce to lie beneath the yonkerpads-pondl lilies, a north erner would call them-with it's head showed up among the broad | green leaves and its mouth stretched wide and gaping, living lure for such luckless birds and bees as mis- took the snare of the parted jaws with their white Things for a half opened lily bud.
 It was in accord with a quite nat
 
 singled out for these special calum- nies. Of the four venomous snakes of Temperate North America he is the least personable in locks and behavior.
 He lacks the grace of his upland cousin, the copperhead, and he lacks the chivalry of his more distant kins- man, the rattler, which gives the enemy due warning before it strikes. He has none of the slimness of form nor patterned beauty of that streak of fanged lightning which lives in the palmetto scrubs the | coral snake. He is mournfully colored and miserably shaped. The tones of dull creek mud and of stale creek slime mingle in his scrofulous mot things. There Is leprosy in the pale foxings of his lips. and dropsy in his blcat amidships.
 Only in the eyes of the taxidermist does he redeem himself for these manifold shortcomings. Being with out bright tints to fade in the mounting, his stuffed skin needs no special vanishing to mako 1t seem authentic. It is poor compliment perhaps, but his only one.
 On all other counts and fer all other qualities he is copiously de- famed and folks generally are prone to believe the worst of him. |
 Japhet Morner, did for one. For | him, swamp water a-thive with ty- phoid germs, or ranchid corn pones In which the active seeds Of pellagra lived, or mosquitoes carrying ma laria and chancre In their bills, con- | veyed no sense of peril.
 The mosquitoes were to be en- | dured. the water was to be drunk. And biliousness was the common lot of man. anyway. At least, in this neck of the woods it was. But snakes, now, were different; any snake and all snakes whatso ever. He accepted for truth all the | snake.
 Certain other things he likewise believed, namely, that first, his nearest ne1ghbor, Snake Doctor, held unwholesome communion with the cotton mouths; that second, Snake Doctor had treasure in money hid away in his shack-on this point he was very sure; and that third, the same Snake Doctor was entirely too fond or his, Japhet's wife, Kizzie Morner, and she of him.
 So 1t would appear he had trip let of reasons for holding the other in disfavor-envy of him for his from seeing him a potential philand- erer and finally that emotion of fear some distrust bred out of stupid ity and credulity which his kind were likely to have for any fellow man fashioned in different likeness from the run of them.
 | That the shambling, soft brained | Snake Doctor was as sexless as a dirt clod would have been apparent to any straight seeing observer; and 1t should have been as plainly visible even to this husband of hers that Kizzie Morner was good woman and an honest one. But the jaundiced. eye sees everything as yellow. and yellow is the color for jealousy. too. and 1t suited Japhet Morner's mood to brew jealousy in his mind. Brewing 1t steadily there was strengthening his will for the put ting through of 2 private project coming over in his thoughts. The | issue came to . head on a certain day. | It was a day in that dreary season of the year when the birds have quit singing in the daytime and the lo- sagged. as though from the sheer exhaustion of its own wasted fervor. The lowland woods had lost that poisonous green sprightliness which came to them early in April and lasted until the August hot spell set in. Even the weeds. which in the bottoms grew rank and high and | close-set, almost, as canes in the cane-brake, were wilted and weary | looking.
 The sun had come up that morning behind clouds. In the middle of the ft fenoon the clouds still banked to- gether to hide the heavens. but the the unstirring air close down to the burnt earth.
 As Japhet Morner came out of the timber into the famished clearing behind his house the sweat dripped from him as he panted in the close. l still humanity.
 His two dogs trailed him. their tongues lollying. One tf them brushed against his leg. He hauled off and fetched the dog a sound kick in the ribs. He was not in happy humor.
 At sun-up. after a breakfast of cold scraps left from the night be- fore, he had gone down to Cashier Creek to get bait Of sunfish. If he were lucky he might catch a catfish for his string. He had no luck, though. The creek was shrunken; it was lower than he had ever re- membered seeing it. The drought had sucked up it's strength. At the shadows it was no more than thin sluggish trickle. In deeper places there scarcely was current enough to keep twgs and dropped leaves moving on the unrippled coffee- cLlored surface.
 Japhet fished and fished-and was rewarded with no nibbles what soever; seemingly, even the little fishes were too languid to bite at the worms he dangled for them in likely spots.
 He came downstream to the Biz Hole so called. where an eighth of d