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“Don't go anigh it, Isaac,” said Mrs. Partington,
with nervous anxiety, on the day of the great railroad
jubilee procession, as the carriage, bearing the big gun,
came by where she and Ike were standing. She had
been very nervous all the morning, and had made some
curious mistakes. When the procession first came along,
she waved her handkerchief at an alderman, taking
him to be the president; and Marshal Tukey she thought
was Lord Elgin.

“Don't go anigh it, — it 's one of the pesky Paxon
guns we read of; they call 'em peace-makers because
they tear people all to pieces; and, depend upon it,
Isaac, if a man got hit once or twice with such a gun as
that, my idea is, that there would n't be much left of him.
O, the wickedness of men, that they should learn war,
and kill people, and spoil good clothes, and act more like
Kottenpots or salvages than they do like men! They
say this Mr. Paxton has got up a Christian Parish in
London, and everybody is going to see it. Well, I hope
he will tend it himself, and get good, and repent of the
evil he has done. But, I 'm sure, I hope he won't have
any such machines as that, ever, to help his preaching.”

The noise of the passing crowd drowned half her
remarks, and, at that moment, a marshal backed his
horse near where she and Ike stood, with a command to

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her to “stand back.” It was astonishing how the flies,
or something, troubled that marshal's horse all the while
he stood there.