was attired in his
best suit of homespun, the choicest product of his wife's dye pot.
His immense vest with its broad luminous stripes, checked the rotundity
of his ample stomach like the lines of latitude and longitude, and
resembled a half finished map of the United States. His blue jeans coat
covered his body as the waters cover the face of the great deep, and
its huge collar encircled the back of his head like the belts of light
around a planet.

The Squire was regaling his friends with his latest side-splitting
jokes. Old "Wamper-jaw" threw himself back in his chair and exploded
with peal after peal of laughter. But suddenly he looked around and
said: "Gen-tul-men, my jaw's flew out'n jint!"

His comrades seized him and pulled him all over the yard trying to get
it back. Finally old "Wamper-jaw" mounted his mule, and with pounding
heels, rode, like Tam O'Shanter, to the nearest doctor who lived two
miles away. The doctor gave his jaw a mysterious yank and it popped back
into socket. "Wamper-jaw" rushed back to join in the festivities at the
Squire's. The glasses were filled again; another side-splitting joke was
told, another peal of laughter went 'round, when "Wamper-jaw" threw his
hand to his face and said: "Gen-tul-men, she's out agin!!!" There was
another hasty ride for the doctor. But in the years that followed;
"Wamper-jaw" was never known to laugh aloud. On the most hilarious
occasions he merely showed his gums.

[Illustration: "WAMPER-JAW."]

THE TINTINNABULATION OF THE DINNER BELLS.

How many millions dream on the lowest planes of life! How few ever reach
the highest and like stars of the first magnitude, shed their light upon
the pathway of the marching centuries! What multitudes there are whose
horizons are lighted with visions and dreams of the flesh pots and soup
bowls,--whose Fallstaffian aspirations never rise above the fat things
of this earth, and whose ear flaps are forever inclined forward,
listening for the dinner bells!

"The bells, bells, bells!
What a world of pleasure their harmony foretells!
The bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells!
The tintinnabulation of the dinner bells!"

In my native mountains there once lived one of these old gluttonous
dreamers. I think he was the champion eater of the world. Many a time I
have seen him at my grandfather's table, and the viands and battercakes
vanished "like the baseless fabric of a vision,"--he left not "a wreck
b