oiled potatoes, which they eat:
but the snake would eat neither the mice nor the potatoes. My
children frequently took it out in their hands, to show it to their
schoolfellows; but my wife, and some others, could not bear the sight
of it. I one day took it in my hand, and opened its mouth with a
penknife, to show a gentleman how different it was from that of the
adder, which I had dead by me: its teeth being no more formidable
or terrific than the teeth of a trout or eel; while the mouth of the
adder had two fangs, like the claws of a cat, attached to the roof of
the mouth, no way connected with its jaw-teeth. While examining the
snake in this manner, it began to smell most horridly, and filled the
room with an abominable odour; I also felt, or thought I felt, a kind
of prickly numbness in the hand I held it in, and did so for some
weeks afterwards. In struggling for its liberty, it twisted itself
round my arm, and discharged its excrements on my coat-sleeve, which
seemed nothing more than milk, or like the chalkings of a woodcock.
It made its escape from me several times by boring a hole through the
gauze; I had lost it for some days at one time, when at length it was
observed peeping out of a mouse-hole behind one of the cellar steps.
Whether it had caught any beetles or spiders in the cellar, I cannot
say; but it looked as fierce as a hawk, and hissed and shook its
tongue, as in open defiance. I could not think of hurting it by
smoking it out with tobacco or brimstone; but called it my fiery
dragon which guarded my ale cellar. At length I caught it, coiled up
on one of the steps. I put it again into an American flour barrel;
but it happened not to be the same as he had been in, and I observed a
nail protruding through the staves about half way up. This, I suppose,
he had made use of to help his escape; for he was missing one morning
about ten o'clock: I had seen him at nine o'clock; so I thought he
could not be far off. I looked about for him for half an hour, when I
gave up the hunt in despair. However, at one o'clock, as the men were
going from dinner, one of them observed the rogue hiding himself under
a stone, fifty yards from the house. 'Dang my buttons,' said he, 'if
here is not master's snake. He came back and told my wife, who
told him to go and kill it. It happened to be _washing-day_: the
washerwoman gave him a pailful of scalding soapsuds to throw on
it; but whether he was most afraid of me or of the snake