of punishment, there’s nobody fit to be hung—­there’s nobody that ought to be whipped.  Hickories oughtn’t to grow any longer, and the best thing the governor can do would be to have all the jails burnt down from one eend of the country to the other.  The proof stands up agin Bunce, and there’s no denying it; and it’s no use, no how, to let this fellow come among us, year after year, to play the same old hand, take our money for his rascally goods, then go away and laugh at us.  And the question before us is jist what I have said, and what shall we do with the critter?  To show you that it’s high time to do something in the matter, look at this calico print, that looks, to be sure, very well to the eye, except, as you see, here’s a tree with red leaves and yellow flowers—­a most ridiculous notion, indeed, for who ever seed a tree with sich colors here, in the very beginning of summer?”

Here the pedler, for the moment, more solicitous for the credit of the manufactures than for his own safety, ventured to suggest that the print was a mere fancy, a matter of taste—­in fact, a notion, and not therefore to be judged by the standard which had been brought to decide upon its merits.  He did not venture, however, to say what, perhaps, would have been the true horn of the difficulty, that the print was an autumn or winter illustration, for that might have subjected him to condign punishment for its unseasonableness.  As it was, the defence set up was to the full as unlucky as any other might have been.

“I’ll tell you what, Master Bunce, it won’t do to take natur in vain.  If you can show me a better painter than natur, from your pairts, I give up; but until that time, I say that any man who thinks to give the woods a different sort of face from what God give ’em, ought to be licked for his impudence if nothing else.”

The pedler ventured again to expostulate; but the argument having been considered conclusive against him, he was made to hold his peace, while the prosecutor proceeded.

“Now then, Mr. Chairman, as I was saying—­here is a sample of the kind of stuff he thinks to impose upon us.  Look now at this here article, and I reckon it’s jist as good as any of the rest, and say whether a little touch of Lynch’s law, an’t the very thing for the Yankee!”

Holding up the devoted calico to the gaze of the assembly, with a single effort of his strong and widely-distended arms, he rent it asunder with little difficulty, the sweep not terminating, until the stuff, which, by-the-way, resigned itself without struggle or resistance to its fate, had been most completely and evenly divided.  The poor pedler in vain endeavored to stay a ravage that, once begun, became epidemical.  He struggled and strove with tenacious hand, holding on to sundry of his choicest bales, and claiming protection from the chair, until warned of his imprudent zeal in behalf of goods so little deserving of the risk, by the sharp and sudden application of an unknown hand to his ears