Genre:

Regular Feature—Anecdote, Drollery

Subjects:

Animal Behaviour, Telegraphy, Sound

    Relates a droll tale regarding the 'massassauga, a species of rattle-snake, hardly as long as one's arm and nearly as thick, that once infested northern Ohio and other portions of the West of forty years ago', and which 'would, according to universal belief, jump to the height of a man's knees, while the bite was generally fatal' (161). In another anecdote, a man from New Hampshire who wishes to 'run a telephone wire from his office to his residence' asks the permission of two 'maiden ladies' who live in a cottage located below the proposed wire, and is told that while they 'should be glad to accommodate him, the noise made by people constantly talking over head would be too annoying to permit' (162).