the rapidity of the Yankee’s utterance, as he continued soliloquizing his nightmare:
"O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! this beats all natur', Aunt Jemima, what shall I do?"
Jumping up in my bed, I cried out loud enough to alarm the house:
"Hello there! are you mad or dreaming? What's all that infernal noise about? Are you going to die with the' cramp-colic, and have me hung for murder?"
By this time I was getting furious, really not knowing whether the fellow was shamming or crazy, as I could not get a word out of him. But to my last appeal he appeared to understand that a friend was near, and groaned out:
"Them darned pork-steaks have given me the 'Minerva Jane.'"
At this announcement, I was almost convulsed with laughter; but his continued groans soon awakened a sympathy for his teat and I replied:
"Why do n't you see if the landlord has any brandy?"
No quicker suggested than attempted; but what was my horror when, as he bounded out of bed, and was feeling in the dark for his boots, I heard one long agonizing yell of, "Murder! murder!" as he went head-foremost through the aperture down into the bed on the lower floor. Before his voice had died away, the sound was reëchoed by the old man, upon whom he had fallen, and who, being stunned by the shock, and awakened out of a dream about land-hunters, redoubled the shouts until the whole house rang with the startling cry. Springing out of bed, and hurrying on my clothes, I ran down the ladder, and reached the group, just as the wife had struck a light, and the old man had discovered the cause of the disturbance in the form of the suspicious Yankee. The terror of the shock and the monstrosity of the act, added the strength of Hercules to the old man’s muscles, and he fell to belaboring the poor horrified Yankee most soundly. No asseverations of innocence could reach the reason of the "green-eyed monster;" and, but for the timely aid of the Madam and myself, who dragged the old tiger off, the Yankee's peddling-days would have been numbered, Nothing could have pacified the old man but my relation
