Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1882 — Picture of Still Life. [ARTICLE]

Picture of Still Life.

A vagrant scorpion strolled leisurely down a plank leaning against a fence on Rusk street. On that plank pensively reclined a negro, whose contemplation was profound and most musically evinced by a sound emitted from his open mouth that recalled to the minds of passers the days of the pit saw. When the scorpion and the African made the conjunction, to say that the African awoke is not an exaggeration. As he tore the reptile from his swarthy neck and pulverized it in the mud beneath the heel of a No, 13 brogan, he got off

some such expression as the following : “ Dat scar a pin lizard must think I got my neck half-soled wid a leather apron, mad dog him !”— Texas paper.