The event of the past month, to my children, has been a shirt-tail chase and capture of a 'possum, in the pitiless snow of midnight, a fortnight ago, by the Vice-President of these united stables and hen-roosts, Sam Bell. The narrative of the affair, in Bell's purset of Know-nothing dialect, would be worth Hackett's coming to hear—but I must confine myself to such mere mention of the circumstances as will suffice to introduce to you our patriotic addition to the family—Native American, and found nowhere else, as the 'possum is accredited to be. Waked up at night, in his farm-cottage under the hill, by a stir among the chickens, Bell, it appears, went to the door (in his integument No. 1) to see what was the matter. It was a bright and bitter cold night, after the clearing up of a snow storm; and, with the opening of the door, he saw some dark animal take up the line of its retreat towards the woods. To almost any gentleman (especially from a foreign country) there would be little doubt as to the outweighing of the comparative attractions—a warm wife in the bed he had just left, or a naked-legged rush, through the snow, after a wild animal. The thinking that can be done in a second, however, by one of our prompt and unchance-losing Yankees, is wonderful to know. The mystery of a month of missing chickens and sucked eggs, was explained to Bell by that dark line drawn over the snow—a fox or a wild-cat, as he took it to be. The jumping motion
