You get nipped by one of them scorpions once, and see how you like it! There was Mrs. Jones, swabbing her face with a sponge; she felt something grab her cheek; she dropped the sponge and out popped a scorpion an inch and a half long! Well, she just got up and danced the Highland fling for two hours and a half--and yell! And you want to know what made me light out of bed so sudden last night? Don't you know one of them things grabbed Miss Boone's foot when she was riding one day?
He was hid in the stirrup, and just clamped himself around her foot and sunk his fangs plum through her shoe; and she just throwed her whole soul into one war whoop and then fainted. And she didn't get out of bed nor set that foot on the floor again for three weeks.
And how did Captain Godfrey always get off so easy? Why, because he always carried a bottle full of scorpions and santipedes soaked in alcohol, and whenever he got bit he bathed the place with that devilish mixture or took a drink out of it, I don't recollect which.
And how did he have to do once, when he hadn't his bottle along? He had to cut out the bite with his knife and fill up the hole with arnica, and then prop his mouth open with the bootjack to keep from getting the lockjaw. Oh, fill me up about this lovely country! You can go on writing that slop about balmy breezes and fragrant flowers, and all that sort of truck, but you're not going to leave out them santipedes and things for want of being reminded of it, you know.
It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream--till you got a bite. A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in future.
