Jonathan Draws the Long Bow
wolves and grisly bears prowl about his room at night, but he sleeps so sound he's obliged to be thrown out of the window every morning to wake him. Mother missed him when he was a baby, and found him at last seated on a hornet's nest, playing at bo-peep with a couple of rattlesnakes. As an infant, 'Zekiel was a wonder, I guess; he had razors and bayonets for toys, walked in top-boots when he was three days old, sucked hot coals, and used to rub his gums with a nutmeggrater; they weaned him the very day he was born, and fed him on pap made of flint-stones and lignumvitae soaked in prussic acid. His appetite, for a boy, was awful; he once eat a buffalo and three parts of a horse and then asked if tea wasn't ready. When Nash travels by rail, he gets out to walk a trifle of forty or fifty miles, and waits an hour till the train overtakes him. The engine comes up, panting and blowing, and often says with a forced laugh, Bust my biler, 'Zekiel, but of all mortal critters, you're the biggest; I recon your father was a flash of lightning, and your mother an airthquake. Darn me if you aint an ornament to creation. 1