s. Our object in this zoological
sketch of a lie is to persuade you of the folly of such a hunting
excursion. If these monsters have such long legs, and go a hundred miles at
a jump, you might as well give up the chase. If they have such keenness of
nostril, they can smell you across the State, and get out of your way. If
they have such long ears, they can hear the hunter's first step in the
woods. If they have such great throats, they can swallow you at a gape. If
they are gregarious, while you shoot one, forty will run upon you like mad
buffaloes, and trample you to death. Arrows bound back from their thick
hide; and as for gunpowder, they use it regularly for pinches of snuff.
After a shower of bullets has struck their side, they lift their hind foot
to scratch the place, supposing a black fly has been biting. Henry the
Eighth, in a hawking party, on foot, attempted to leap a ditch in
Hertfordshire, and with his immense avoirdupois weight went splashing into
the mud and slime, and was hauled out by his footman half dead. And that is
the fate of men who spend their time hunting for lies. Better go to your
work, and let the lies run. Their bloody muzzles have tough work with a man
usefully busy. You cannot so easily overcome them with sharp retort as with
adze and yardstick. All the howlings of Californian wolves at night do not
stop the sun from kindling victorious morn on the Sierra Nevadas, and all
the ravenings of defamation and revenge cannot hinder the resplendent dawn
of heaven on a righteous soul.

But they who spend their time in trying to lasso and decapitate a lie will
come back worsted, as did the English cockneys from a fox chase described
in the poem entitled "Pills to Purge Melancholy:"

"And when they had done their sport, they came to London, where they dwell,
Their faces all so torn and scratched their wives scarce knew them well;
For 'twas a very great mercy so many 'scaped alive,
For of twenty saddles carried out, they brought again but five."

CHAPTER XII.

A BREATH OF ENGLISH AIR.

My friend looked white as the wall, flung the "London Times" half across
the room, kicked one slipper into the air and shouted, "Talmage, where on
earth did you come from?" as one summer I stepped into his English home.
"Just come over the ferry to dine with you," I responded. After some
explanation about the health of my family, which demanded a sea voyage, and
thus necessitated my coming, we planne