the truth and doing them good. They give this story out at all the
Sunday-schools in our part of the country, and draw moral lessons from
it. It is a story that a little child can believe.

It happened in the old crinoline days. My aunt, who was then living
in a country-town, had gone out shopping one morning, and was standing
in the High Street, talking to a lady friend, a Mrs. Gumworthy, the
doctor's wife. She (my aunt) had on a new crinoline that morning, in
which, to use her own expression, she rather fancied herself. It was
a tremendously big one, as stiff as a wire-fence; and it "set"
beautifully.

They were standing in front of Jenkins', the draper's; and my aunt
thinks that it--the crinoline--must have got caught up in something,
and an opening thus left between it and the ground. However this may
be, certain it is that an absurdly large and powerful bull-dog, who
was fooling round about there at the time, managed, somehow or other,
to squirm in under my aunt's crinoline, and effectually imprison
himself beneath it.

Finding himself suddenly in a dark and gloomy chamber, the dog,
naturally enough, got frightened, and made frantic rushes to get out.
But whichever way he charged; there was the crinoline in front of him.
As he flew, he, of course, carried it before him, and with the
crinoline, of course, went my aunt.

But nobody knew the explanation. My aunt herself did not know what
had happened. Nobody had seen the dog creep inside the crinoline.
All that the people did see was a staid and eminently respectable
middle-aged lady suddenly, and without any apparent reason, throw her