On a cold, stormy day in December, a man chanced to come into the bar-room of Keeler's tavern, where Mat Olmstead and several of his companions were lounging. The stranger had on a new hat of the latest fashion, and still shining with the gloss of the iron. He seemed conscious of his dignity, and carried his head in such a manner as to invite attention to it. Mat's knowing eye immediately detected the weakness of the stranger; so he approached him, and said,--
"What a very nice hat you've got on! Pray who made it?"
"Oh, it came from New York," was the reply.
The stranger took it off his head, gingerly, and handed it to him.
"It is a wonderful nice hat," said Matthew; "and I see it's a real salamander!"
"Salamander?" said the other. "What's that?"
"No? I never heard of that before: I don't believe it's one of that kind."
"Sartain sure; I'll bet you a mug of flip of it."
"Done: now I'll just put it under the fore-stick?"
It being thus arranged, Mat put the hat under the fore-stick into a glowing mass of coals. In an instant it took fire, collapsed, and rolled into a black, crumpled mass of cinders.
"I du declare," said Mat Olmstead, affecting great astonishment, "it ain't a salamander hat arter all! Well, I'll pay the flip!"
Yet wit is not always wisdom. Keen as this man was as to things immediately before him, he was of narrow understanding. He seemed not to possess the faculty of reasoning beyond his senses. He never would admit that the sun was fixed, and that the world turned round.
I remember, that when the great solar eclipse of 1806 was approaching, he with two other men were at work in one of our fields, not far from the house. The eclipse was to begin at ten or eleven o'clock, and my father invited the workmen to come up and observe it through some pieces of smoked glass. They came, though Mat ridiculed the idea of an eclipse--not but the thing might happen; but it was idle to suppose it could be foretold. While they were waiting and watching, my father explained the cause and nature of the phenomenon.
Mat laughed with that low, scoffing chuckle, with which a woodcock, safe in his den, replies to the bark of a besieging dog.
"So you don't believe this?" said my father.