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eton for them. My shot would spoil the skull, he said. But think what a trophy for me that diamond-back would have been slain by my own red right hand, and by the same hand despoiled of head, rattles, and all! It occurred to me that as the Smithsonian Institution had not spent four good months with the Herr Doctor, tramping among snake-infected jungles and marshes to supply the common table with duck, snipe, and other toothsome game, my claim to the scalp, ornaments, and weapons of this individual snake ante-dated and outweighed any that could be set up by the Smithsonian.

But as there was not time to present any arguments, I said and did nothing. No doubt, the better plan would have been to shoot the snake first, putting my side of the case afterward. And I determined to do this, when a dilemma of the kind again occurred. But meanwhile the Herr Doctor and his brother had fallen upon the snake-which, from the first, showed no fear nor misgiving, and neither attempted to make a coil nor spring a rattle — and with clubs they belabored him to death. He measured when hung up to be skinned, seven feet and eight inches in length, and thirteen inches in girth; and he had nine rattles and a "button."

The skin, minus head and without rattles, adorns my gun-rack yonder, for the Herr Doctor, at the last moment of my departure, was moved - probably by an upbraiding conscience- to put the skin into my possession. The defect in the trophy, as a trophy, is that in exhibiting it to wondering and admiring friends, I can not truthfully say that I, myself, killed the wearer of the skin.

As for the rest of the diamond-back, that was eaten, bones and all, by prowling animals of the night - so the Smithsonian never got the skeleton, after all.

From the fangs of the monster as he hung, we

forced, by pressing them back against the poisonbags behind them, at least two tablespoonfuls of venom - a clear, scentless, almost colorless, though slightly amber-tinged, liquor. As this liquor, even when spilled upon the ground, is quite as dangerous and deadly as the blood of the fabled hydra, we carefully gathered up the earth, the grass, the sticks, everything on which a drop could by any possibility have fallen, burned all that would burn, and then buried the residue and the ashes.

I must not omit to say that, searching for the rabbit, after his assassin was killed, we found the poor thing under our cottage, dead. Two small punctures in the fore-shoulder, about as large as would be made by No. 4 shot, showed where it was struck. After receiving the wound, it ran only about thirty feet. But though stone-dead and cold when found, scarce half an hour later, the body was not in the least swollen nor discolored, which contradicted what I had before been told of the effect of a snake-bite.

Talking the affair over, it seemed strange and not particularly pleasant, to think that this python had been prowling about and under the dining-room, for no one knew how long, and that while we sat at dinner we had only the floor between our feet and his fangs. We must often have stepped over him in going to meals, as he lay hidden there under the piazza, quietly waiting for his dinner to come along. And perhaps the thought that such a monster could be so near, unsuspected until slain, rather mitigated our regret at leaving Paradise. But is it not strange that the only diamond-backs of the winter made themselves visible, one, three days after we came - the other, three days before we went? Premeditation could not have planned it better, nor could the exhibitions of these peculiar products of "Paradise" have been more dramatically arranged if the leading idea had been to give us a thrilling reception and a startling send-off!

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"How I do hate to sew! If aprons only grew without any sewing!" exclaimed Polly, with a deep sigh, as she dropped in her lap the little bluechecked gingham pinafore which her mother had given her to hem. She was sitting on a little wooden bench under a great pine-tree, not far from the house,- her favorite spot in all the big farm.

A moment after her impatient exclamation, a queer-looking little old man with a hump on his back appeared suddenly before her, and, to her great astonishment, remarked in a squeaky little voice:

In a twinkling off went his coat. Polly saw that it was quite new; and, sure enough, there inside the collar, where every coat has a loop, she beheld, to her boundless astonishment, a kind of woolen stem!

"I'd like to see that tree!" said Polly, with energy.

"Well, so you can," responded the Dwarf. "Is it far?" asked Polly, doubtfully.

"Yes; but you have only to put your thimble on your thumb, shut your eyes, and say, "Thimble, thimble, let me go

Where those crops of aprons grow!'

"Aprons do grow! I've just harvested my fall and, before you open them, you'll be there." crop."

If he had not looked at her so kindly with his little twinkling gray eyes, Polly would have been afraid of the queer little dwarf; she was, however, so eager to hear more about his extraordinary crop of aprons that she did not run away at all, but, overcome with amazement, exclaimed:

"A crop of aprons! Why, I never heard of such a thing!"

"Well," said the Dwarf, "where I live, aprons and dresses, and coats, and hats, and all such articles, grow as thick as blackberries. It was only yesterday I picked the very coat I have on, and if you don't believe it, look at the stem."

Without waiting to run and ask her mamma's permission, as she knew she ought to do, Polly eagerly put her thimble on her thumb, shut her eyes, and repeated the magic words.

When she opened them again, the pine-tree had disappeared, and she found herself in a beautiful garden full of strange plants, the like of which she had never seen.

"Come!" said the Dwarf, who was now dresscd like a gardener and had a watering-pot in his hand; "come! Let us see the apron crop."

Polly followed him through a gate into a field of what seemed to be corn-stalks.

"Here's the Apron Field," said the Dwarf, plucking an odd kind of ear, from the end of which

hung, instead of corn-silk, two unmistakable apronstrings. Hastily stripping off the outside husks, he gave to Polly the little roll which lay inside. When it was shaken out, there, to her intense surprise and delight, was the prettiest little white apron imaginable, all trimmed around with white lace and furnished with two long apron-strings. The Dwarf allowed Polly to amuse herself plucking and opening the ears. She found first a blue-checked and then a cross-barred muslin apron,- - now a long-sleeved and then a tiny bibapron; each plant bore a different kind, and the aprons were little or big according as the ears were partly or fully grown. Polly's arms were nearly full of aprons, when the Dwarf said: "Come now and see the Hat Plant."

A few steps brought them to a row of tall plants which had leaves somewhat like those of sunflowers, but, instead of blossoms, each stem bore a hat!

"Oh, how be-a-u-ti-ful!" cried Polly, as she ran from one patch to another, pulling violet ribbons, pink, yellow, blue, and cardinal ribbons, right up by the roots, the roots themselves being as pretty as any other part of the ribbon, for they were delicate fringes of the same color. Polly noticed that all the watered ribbons grew in a little pool at the end of the field, and that the "waterings" or waves were made by the wind blowing the water in ripples against the ribbongrass.

Polly's collection was now getting so large that the Dwarf motioned to another little gardener, who ran off and soon brought a queer-looking wheelbarrow, made of a big clothes-basket set upon two pincushion-wheels. With several yard tapemeasures he strapped all Polly's pickings into it, and trundled it along after her wherever she went.

As they left the Ribbon Field, Polly asked the Dwarf where he picked his coat. "Just over "Oh, my!" exclaimed Polly with delight, for here," said the Dwarf, leading Polly, as he spoke, there were sailor hats, broad-brimmed garden to an orchard of Jacket-trees. There she saw hats, sun-bonnets, beavers, tiny bonnets, and all every kind of Jacket-tree- from those bearing other kinds besides. The Dwarf let her pick all nice, tender little baby-jackets, to the strong and she wanted, and helped her select for her baby fully developed overcoats for men. The coats brother a little pink cap "just budding," and for were of all materials, and they hung, like the

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her father and mother two straw hats which were Dwarf's jacket, from a stem inside the collar. "quite ripe," as he expressed it.

"Now we 'll go to the Ribbon Field to find trimmings," said the Dwarf, leading Polly by a winding way through the Hat Plant Garden to a field of ribbon-grass which grew just one yard high, and in patches of every imaginable color.

VOL. XV.-18.

The

Overcoat-tree had a thicker bark, and was in every way a tougher tree than the others.

"What are these funny bushes which grow all around under the Jacket-trees?" asked Polly, after selecting a full assortment of coats to give to her father and her uncles.

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see under these vest-bushes this little dwarf shrub? This bears shirts, which are one of the most useful crops we have on the whole place."

Polly, not feeling as much interested in shirts and vests as the Dwarf, ran on. Suddenly she stood quite still, and exclaimed:

"Oh, my! What is that?"

Before them was a wonderful tree which looked rather like Polly's great pine, except that it seemed made of silver, for it shone very brightly in the

sun.

"That," replied the Dwarf, "is our Needle-tree. If anything has to be altered, we use these needles, which we call pine-needles. They only grow in the finest emery soil."

"That's what makes them so bright, I suppose," said Polly, as she carefully scooped up a handful of those lying on the ground. "But what are these big, hard strawberries?"

"They are emery-bags, which always spring up from emery soil, just as toad-stools do in your country. They almost always grow in the shape of strawberries."

After supplying herself with plenty of emerybags, Polly next followed the Dwarf to the Glove orchard. There she beheld some very strange

silk-glove trees, and cotton-glove trees. The boughs being rather high, the Dwarf picked for the delighted and astonished Polly one pair of every kind and color. What amused her most were several queer trees which in summer produced mitts and in winter, mittens; and the Dwarf explained that they had raised this singular fruit by planting gloves which were half-ripe and not yet divided into fingers.

They had returned to the garden, where the first thing Polly saw was a grape arbor.

"Here are the Button-vines," explained the Dwarf; "I'll pick you a cluster."

From a kind of grape-vine hung bright clusters of buttons; here a bunch of mother-of-pearl, there one of black crochet-buttons; here a cluster of steel, and there one of shoe-buttons. They grew to the stem by their shanks, and there were just six dozen of each kind in a cluster.

"Oh, what a lovely button-string these will make," shouted Polly, as she ran about, picking bunch after bunch of many colors.

Soon the Button-vines were left behind, and they came to another orchard.

"Here," proudly remarked the Dwarf, "is our Dress orchard. We pride ourselves on our choice

eral dozens of various patterns, she and her two companions moved on to new wonders.

variety of dresses. We have three crops a year, to fit the winter, autumn, and spring styles! By grafting one kind on another, we have obtained some very rare and curious fashions. Sometimes a mere accident will produce a new and pretty style, for instance, this variety of puffed-sleeve dresses resulted from an accidental lapping-over of that part of the dress when it was in the bud. Our choicest, rarest styles, our 'Worth dresses,' we call them, are raised under glass; and, of course, much care is required in putting trees so large as these, under glass."

But our little country Polly did not know what "Worth dresses " were, nor did she care, for she was wholly absorbed in gazing around her. There were Wrapper-trees, Ball-dress trees, Walking-suit trees, Baby-dress bushes and a dozen other kinds.

The second little Dwarf, who had by this time filled three wheelbarrows with Polly's pickings, now had to fetch another to carry the load of dresses which Polly, with the Dwarf's help, eagerly selected. She herself could not, of course, pick the right sizes so quickly as he, for he knew just where to find the bud dresses which fitted her, and the fully grown ones which suited her mamma.

"Now tell me, how do handkerchiefs grow?" asked Polly, as they presently left the Dress orchard.

"We're just coming to the Handkerchief-bed," said the Dwarf; and in a moment he stooped to

The Collar-and-Cuff tree interested her greatly, for she found the collars and cuffs grew rolled up inside of a kind of chestnut-burr. She laughed outright when the Dwarf explained that "to turn out a good stiff fruit," the tree had constantly to be watered with thick starch-water mixed with a little blueing.

On a stalk near by Polly found cuff-buttons growing like peas in a pod, and she amused herself for some time shelling a quantity of them just as if they had been peas. It was odd enough to see gold, silver, pearl, and rubber cuff-buttons rattling into the pan which the Dwarf had given her to catch them as they fell.

When she had shelled about a peck, she ran on after the Dwarf, who was pulling up from the grounds something which was like a potato-plant. Instead of a potato, Polly saw, when the dirt was shaken from what she would have called the roots, a perfectly-formed pair of shoes growing upon stems, with tendrils resembling fine silk shoestrings. On examining these shoes, she found in each a little roll. She pulled it out as she would an almond from its shell, and there was a stocking just the right size for the shoe, and in the other shoe was the mate. Polly thought she should never tire of pulling up these fascinating plants,- finding boots, slippers, shoes, and even overshoes of all kinds. (There were, however,

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