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Show z STRANGE JS FICTION. A Kansas Man Tells a Snake Yarn That Would Do Credit to aCalifor-nian. aCalifor-nian. AFTEB SEVENTEEN LONG YEARS. The Heroes of Young Writers Money Spent Tor Show The Beauty of Chinese Wit. Bevanteen years ago I lived with my father and mother on the banks of the Stranger river, in Atchison connty, Kan-- Kan-- tag. I was only 7 years of age, and one 4ay my youthful fancy was caught by tho pretty colors of a blacksnake. I pulled a small ring off my finger and a tring out of my pocket. Placing the ring over the head of the snake, I started home in triumph, dragging the snake at my heels, and feeling as much a conqueror con-queror as the Roman emperor who dragged the captives behind his chariots. char-iots. In climbing over a fonce my captive cap-tive made its escape. Ring, string, everything disappeared. I shed a few tears at the time, but had forgotten the matter until lately. I returned re-turned to the vicinity of my old home In Atchison county for the purpose of buying some sheep. While crossing a email crock that flows into the Stranger river my attention was called by the barking of my dog to a strange something some-thing in a tree. I investigated and found there an immense blacksnake, fully ten feet long. Between the dog and myself we succeeded in killing the snake, though I was obliged to use in . the warfaro both a club and a revolver. Tho dog finished the snake by giving it a shaking and tearing it i pieces. You will hardly believe me, I know, but yon can have my head if it wasn't the same identical snake that got away from me seventeen years ago. How di I know? Simple enough. That little blacksnake had grown to be a monstrous big one; the little silver ring around its neck had grown until it was as large as a lady's bracelet, and the piece of twine had grown until it had become a good sized rope. But the strangest part of all was that the dog had shaken out seventeen seven-teen little blacksnakes, and that each one was the exact counterpart of the snake that made its escape from me in the long ago, while around the necks of each of the seventeen young ones were silver rings, aud attached to those rings were short pieces of twine. And upon each one of these silver rings you could plainly plain-ly distinguish the initials of my name, just as thoy had been stamped in the silver sil-ver ring that I wore when 7 years old. .Kansas City Times. |