Jeffersonian Republican

Yankee Ingenuity.

In the course of his lecture on Tuesday evening, before the Mercantile Library Association, Mr. Latrobe related the following incident.

While crossing, in the stage, one of the vast western prairies, far ahead on the black line which marked the road, was discovered an object which, from the distance, could not be made out. On their near approach, it was discovered to be one of those vehicles known as a Yankee pedlar's wagon. The owner of the concern had met with a sad accident. He had broken both an axle-tree and a shaft of his colored and curtained wagon. The first he had repaired with a rope, but that done, every inch of the rope was exhausted. Miles from a tree, or even a bush of any kind, from which to cut a temporary shaft, here was a dilemma, truly.

But the man was equal to it. He had a tin drinking cup, a hammer, some nails, and a pair of tailor's shears. When the stage came up, and stopped, the man was found busily employed in cutting up the cup into strips, having first broken out the bottom, knocked off the handle, and unrolled and flattened out the cylinder of tin that formed the body of the cup. The curious passengers looked on while the Yankee pedlar proceeded to lay the two broken ends of the shaft together, which, fortunately, had been broken obliquely. He then wrapped around them the strips of tin and nailed the ends fast. This done, he tried the shaft, and found it strong. As he hitched in his horse, he looked up to the wondering passengers in the stage coach, and with a quiet smile of satisfaction, remarked, "I guess this is the first time in those parts, that a broken shaft was mended with a tin cup!" How the passengers in the stage coach laughed, the lecturer did not say; but their merriment may be easily imagined.—[Balt. Sun.