He was six feet high, and Miss Mary trembled.

He started forward a few paces and then stopped.
"Wass I go home for ?" he suddenly asked, with great gravity.
"Go and take a bath," replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with great disfavor.
To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest, threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly forward, darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of the river.
"Goodness heavens!--the man will be drowned!" said Miss Mary; and then, with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and locked herself in.
That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the blacksmith's wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got drunk.

"Abner," responded Mrs.Stidger, reflectively, "let's see: Abner hasn't been tight since last 'lection." Miss Mary would have liked to ask if he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold bath would have hurt him; but this would have involved an explanation, which she did not then care to give.

So she contented herself with opening her gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs.Stidger--a fine specimen of Southwestern efflorescence--and then dismissed the subject altogether.

The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in Boston: "I think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least objectionable.