....  John Reed, of Illinois, is a man who knows his rights, and knowing dares maintain.  Having communicated to a young lady his intention of conferring upon her the honour of his company at a Fourth of July celebration, John was pained and disgusted to hear the proposal quietly declined.  John went thoughtfully away to a neighbour who keeps a double-shotgun.  This he secured, and again sought the object of his hopeless preference.  The object was seated at the dinner-table contending with her lobscouse, and did not feel his presence near.  Mr. Reed poised and sighted his artillery, and with the very natural remark, “I think this fetcher,” he exploded the twin charges.  A moment later might have been seen the rare spectacle of a headless young lady sitting bolt upright at table, spooning a wad of hash into the top of her neck.  The wall opposite presented the appearance of having been bombarded with fresh livers and baptized with sausage-meat.

No one in the vicinity slept any that night.  They were busy getting ready for the Fourth:  the gentlemen going about inviting the ladies to attend the celebration, and the ladies hastily and unconditionally accepting.

....  In answer to the ladies who are always bothering him for a photograph, Mr. Grile hopes to satisfy all parties by the following meagre description of his charms.

In person he is rather thin early in the morning, and a trifle corpulent after dinner; in complexion pale, with a suspicion of ruby about the gills.  He wears his hair brown, and parted crosswise of his remarkably fine head.  His eyes are of various colours, but mostly bottle-green, with a glare in them reminding one of incipient hydrophobia-from which he really suffers.  A permanent depression in the bridge of his nose was inherited from a dying father what time the son mildly petitioned for a division of the estate to which he and his seventeen brothers were about to become the heirs.  The mouth is gentlemanly capacious, indicative of high breeding and feeding; the under jaw projects slightly, forming a beautiful natural reservoir for the reception of beer and other liquids.  The forehead retreats rapidly whenever a creditor is met, or an offended reader espied coming toward the office.

His legs are of unequal length, owing to his constant habit of using one of them to kick people who may happen to present a fairer mark than the nearest dog.  His hand is remarkably slender and white, and is usually inserted in another man’s pocket.  In dress he is wonderfully fastidious, preferring to wear nothing but what is given him.  His gait is something between those of a mud-turtle and a jackass-rabbit, verging closely on to the latter at periods of supposed personal danger, as before intimated.

In conversation he is animated and brilliant, some of his lies being quite equal to those of Coleridge or Bolingbroke; but in repose he resembles nothing so much as a heap of old clothes.  In conclusion, his respect for letter-writing ladies is so great that he would not touch one of them with a ten-foot pole.