A Catskill Mountaineer Who Prefers Reptiles to Wife and Child.
    Up in the Catskills lives one of those men who have an affinity for snakes. He prefers the companionship of any kind of reptile to that of the most genial man or fascinating woman. Wherever he goes he carries with him several of these pets, and on several occasions has sent women into hysterics and made men nervous and angry by taking from his pocket a shining black snake or poisonous copperhead and fondling it tenderly.
    In a moment of abstraction from his devotion to snakes he asked a woman to marry him, and for some incomprehensible reason she consented. It was not long, however, until she began to make objection to the numerous reptiles which the snake lover insisted on bringing into the house.
    Trouble began and continued. The sympathy of the neighbors was with the wife. They advised her to leave a man who could be little better than a snake himself to subject her to such indignities.
    She bore it until there was a baby in the family. Then the fond father took to wheeling the baby out in its perambulator and bringing it back surrounded by snakes. This was too much for the mother, and she left the snake collector for good and all.
    No one wanted to rent him a house, so he bought a little place of his own and lives alone with his snakes. The villagers give the house a wide berth, and the summer visitors hasten the other way when they see him coming down the street with a snake coiled about his neck.
    “Oh, yes,-is a beautiful place,” said a girl who had just returned home from a two weeks’ visit there, “but I wouldn’t go again as long as that snake man lives there. He says the horrid things are harmless as if that made any difference. The only compensation is that he has collected so many of the miserable things that there are fewer about the country than would be otherwise.” New York Press.
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