YANKEE NOTIONS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 48, 30 March 1894, Page 29

YANKEE NOTIONS.

" I paw a funny thiDg io Cheyenne a few weeks ago," said aDetroitcr who returned from a Wes'ern trip the other day. " I was wandering around town to pee the elephant ani chance led me into a big saloon where all the scrappers made their beidquarters. Back of the saloon was a building where a professor of tbe manly art gave instruction* and where the ' pugs ' thumped each other at exhibitions. Tney were* 'trying out' anew arrival that day, and I should Bay there were forty or tifty tough-looking chaps in the place. Soon after I entered a young man who had come through from Denver in my car dropped in. He couldn't have been over 24 years of age, while he was over six feet tall and his weight only 120 pounds. He was long-faced, thin aad long-legged and reminded yoo of nothing so much as a boy son stilts. Two men were getting ready to go on when long leg peeled (f? his coat, vest, and ollar, put them in my charg-, and climbed upon the platform." " That was a ' defi ' to the crowd ? " " Exactly, and in about a minute they put a man up to punch his head off. They gave long legs a secjnd, aid the firm thing h« did was to take the glasses off tbe young man's nose. The latter reached for them and said : " Excuse me, bat I always fL>ht wih my glaiaes on." " Bat they'll get knocked off or jammed into your face." " Don't you believe it I It's never happened ye', and I don't think it will now." '•The scrapper over in tbe other corner couldn't make it out. He was a man so sure of himself that he was goiDg to put up his dukes with a pair of eye-glasses on his noae. He must, perforce be a knockerout from Knockersville, and it was better to retreat than to carry around a broken jaw. He therefore retreattd. Sevjr-.! others came forward, but when they saw long legs Heated cross-legged in his corner with those glasses poised so jtuntily they didn't want anything of him. Then he sot up and said :—: — •' Gentlemen, there is no limit to weight. I always fight in I glasses, as I'm a little near-pighted. I will, however, remove my glass eye and false teeth if deennj i b^st. Will yjur bjst man step up here for a couple of rounds?" " But no one stepped. He waited a minute or two and then pulled on* the gloves with a look of disappointment and got into bis clothes, and we went out together. He didn't look to me at all like a Bcmpp^r, and as w? walked down the st-eet I said : " Wh^t sort of a deal were you giving that crowd ?" "A gigantic bluff," h^ answered wi^h a Uu|h, " Are you a fi.'hter ?" " I never struck a blow in my life, not even in fun." '• But suppose one of those scrappers had tackled you ?" " I should have backed down and asked 'em all up to drink. But there was no danger. I've tried it half a dozen times before, and the glasses alwuya settles 'em." " How about the glass eye and the false teeth ? " I simply rung 'em in to help on the bloff. Haven't got a false tooth in my head, and both eyes are perfect. It's a bluff of my iuvention, and works like a charm. Please don't give it away." " And that afternoon," said the Detroiter in conclusion, " when we took tbe tr«m east tbrra weie a hundred sports down to tbe depot to pee long legs eff, and I'm a duffer if they didn't present him with a bottle of wine mid give him three cheers and a tiger I"— Free Press.

Friend— You are a gtod shot an! ein pick bim tff with perfect Itiety right from this window. Editor— Hah llf you were running ihia pap r, you'l soon bn bankrupt. If I should kill him I'd lost a subscriber. —New York Weekly.