* * * * *

“POSSUM UP A GUM TREE!”

A grand gladiatorial tongue-threshing took place lately in a field near Paisley, between the two great Chartist champions—­Feargus O’Connor and the Rev. Mr. Brewster.  The subject debated was, Whether is moral or physical force the fitter instrument for obtaining the Charter?  The Doctor espoused the moral hocussing system, and Feargus took up the bludgeon for physical force.  After a pretty considerable deal of fireworks had been let off on both sides, it was agreed to divide the field, when Feargus, waving his hat, ascended into a tree, and called upon his friends to follow him.  But, alas! few answered to the summons,—­he was left in a miserable minority; and the Doctor, as the Yankees say, decidedly “put the critter up a tree.”  Feargus, being a Radical, should have kept to the root instead of venturing into the higher branches of political economy.  At all events the Doctor, as the Yankees say, “put the critter up a tree,” where we calculate he must have looked tarnation ugly.  The position was peculiarly ill-chosen—­for when a fire-and-faggot orator begins to speak trees-on, it is only natural that his hearers should all take their leaves!

* * * * *

AN UNDIVIDED MOIETY.

The Herald gives an account of two persons who were carried off suddenly at Lancaster by a paralytic attack each.  We should have been curious to know the result if, instead of an attack each, they had had one between them.

* * * * *

THE HEIR OF APPLEBITE.

CHAPTER IX.

SHOWS THAT DOCTORS DIFFER.

[Illustration:  H]Having christened his child, Agamemnon felt it to be his bounden duty to have him vaccinated; but his wife’s mother, with a perversity strongly characteristic of the genus, strenuously opposed Dr. Jenner’s plan of repealing the small pox[1], and insisted upon having him inoculated.  Poor Mrs. Applebite was sorely perplexed between her habitual reverence for the opinions of her mama and the dread which she naturally felt of converting the face of the infant heir into a plum-pudding.  Agamemnon had evidently determined to be positive upon this point, and all that could be extracted from him was the one word—­vaccination!

    [1] Baylis.

To which Mrs. Waddledot replied,

“Vaccination, indeed!—­as though the child were a calf!  I’m sure and certain that the extreme dulness of young people of the present day is entirely owing to vaccination—­it imbues them with a very stupid portion of the animal economy.”

As Agamemnon could not understand her, he again ejaculated—­“Vaccination!”