“After a careful examination of the Bradley Patent Imperishable Army Sausage, we find that it is eminently suitable for certain well-defined purposes.  If it should be introduced to warfare as a missile, we could calculate with precision that its projection from a gun into a besieged town would instantly induce the garrison to evacuate the place and quit; but the barbarity which would be involved in subjecting even an enemy to direct contact with the Bradley Sausage is so frightful that we shrink from recommending its use, excepting in extreme cases.  The odor disseminated by the stink-pot used in war by the Chinese is fragrant and balmy compared with the perfume which belongs to this article.  It might also be used profitably as a manure for poor land, and in a very cold climate, where it is absolutely certain to be frozen, it could be made serviceable as a tent-pin.

“But as an article of food it is open to several objections.  Bradley’s method of mixing is so defective that he has one sausage filled with peas, another with gum-arabic, another with pepper and another with beef.  The beef sausages will certainly kill any man who eats a mouthful, unless they are constantly kept on ice from the hour they are made, and the gum-arabic sausages are not sufficiently nutritious to enable an army to conduct an arduous campaign.  We are therefore disposed to recommend that the sausage shall not be accepted by the department, and that Bradley’s friends put him in an asylum where his mind can be cared for.”

When Bradley heard about the report, he was indignant; and after reflecting that republics are always ungrateful, he sent a box of the sausages to Bismarck, in order to ascertain if they could not be introduced to the German army.  Three months later he was shot at one night by a mysterious person, and the belief prevails in this neighborhood that it was an assassin sent over to this country by Bismarck for the single purpose of butchering the inventor of the Imperishable Army Sausage.  Since then Bradley has abandoned the project, and he is now engaged in perfecting a washing-machine which has reached such a stage that on the first trial it tore four shirts and a bolster-slip to rags.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FACTS IN REFERENCE TO MR. BUTTERWICK’S HORSE.

Mr. Butterwick is not a good judge of horses, but a brief while ago he thought he would like to own a good horse, and so he went to a sale at a farm over in Tulpehocken township, and for some reason that has not yet been revealed he bid upon the forlornest wreck of a horse that ever retained vitality.  It was knocked down to him before he had a chance to think, and he led it home with something like a feeling of dismay.  The purchase in a day or two got to be the joke of the whole village, and people poked fun at Butterwick in the most merciless manner.  But he was inclined to take a philosophical view of the matter, and to present it in rather a novel and interesting light.  When I spoke to him of the unkind things that were said about the horse, he said,