So, ye manufacturers of snake stories horrific, amusive, or
instructive, put that against your tales of blacksnakes, copperheads,
cotton-mouths, horn-tails, water-mocassins, and the whole tribe else.

But as to the _fascination_, what of that?

Why, although I have never been fascinated, or seen a person in that
singular situation, yet I am a firm believer in the art, a believer
against my wishes--because evidence indisputable has been furnished
me, and in abundance. Now I leave out of the question, all the
influences of fright, surprise, etc., also all the humbug stories of
novel writers and romancers in private life, and yet there is a
remainder that I cannot cast out. One or two anecdotes, and then I
come to my principal proof.

A gentleman of my acquaintance, passing along a bridle path, observed
a mouse running backwards and forwards, upon a fallen log, as if in
great terror. Reining in this horse, he paused full ten minutes, and
until the mouse disappeared on the farther side of the log. Drawing
nearer, and peeping over, his suspicions of Lucifer's guile were
verified--for mousey was within three inches of his open jaw,
"irresistibly attracted," said the narrator, "although he was drawing
back with all his might." The latter part of the tale is fishy--for
the gentleman was twenty feet off, and could not nave seen that--but
he saw the mouse finally disappear in that cavernous gullet; and when
he killed the snake-a large black one--the mouse lay in its stomach,
_without a wound_. How will that do?

Another, well authenticated. A young man, of some twenty years,