REMARKS

By BILL NYE. 

(EDGAR W. NYE. )

Ah Sin was his name;And I shall not deny, In regard to the same, What the name might imply:But his smile it was pensive and childlike, As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye. 

--Bret Harte. 

With over one hundred and fifty illustrations, by J. H. SMITH. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Bill Nye]

DIRECTIONS. 

This book is not designed specially for any one class of people. It isfor all. It is a universal repository of thought. Some of my bestthoughts are contained in this book. Whenever I would think a thoughtthat I thought had better remain unthought, I would omit it from thisbook. For that reason the book is not so large as I had intended. Whena man coldly and dispassionately goes at it to eradicate from his workall that may not come up to his standard of merit, he can make a largevolume shrink till it is no thicker than the bank book of an outspokenclergyman. 

This is the fourth book that I have published in response to theclamorous appeals of the public. Whenever the public got to clamoringtoo loudly for a new book from me and it got so noisy that I could notignore it any more, I would issue another volume. The first was a redbook, succeeded by a dark blue volume, after which I published a greenbook, all of which were kindly received by the American people, and, under the present yielding system of international copyright, greedilysnapped up by some of the tottering dynasties. 

But I had long hoped to publish a larger, better and, if possible, aredder book than the first; one that would contain my better thoughts, thoughts that I had thought when I was feeling well; thoughts that Ihad emitted while my thinker was rearing up on its hind feet, if I maybe allowed that term; thoughts that sprang forth with a wild whoop anddemanded recognition. 

This book is the result of that hope and that wish. It is my greatestand best book. It is the one that will live for weeks after other bookshave passed away. Even to those who cannot read, it will come like abenison when there is no benison in the house. To the ignorant, thepictures will be pleasing. The wise will revel in its wisdom, and thehousekeeper will find that with it she may easily emphasize a statementor kill a cockroach. 

The range of subjects treated in this book is wonderful, even to me. Itis a library of universal knowledge, and the facts contained in it aredifferent from any other facts now in use. I have carefully guarded, all the way through, against using hackneyed and moth-eaten facts. As aresult, I am able to come before the people with a set of new andattractive statements, so fresh and so crisp that an unkind word wouldwither them in a moment. 

I believe there is nothing more to add, except that I most heartilyendorse the book. It has been carefully read over by the proof-readerand myself, so we do not ask the public to do anything that we were notwilling to do ourselves. 

I cannot be responsible for the board of orphans whose parents read thisbook and leave their children in destitute circumstances. 

Bill Nye

CONTENTS. 

About GeologyAbout PortraitsA Bright Future for PugilismAbsent MindedA CalmAccepting the Laramie PostofficeA CircularA Collection of KeysA ConventionA Father's Advice to his SonA Father's LetterA Goat in a FrameA Great SpiritualistA Great UpheavalA Journalistic TenderfootA Letter of RegretsAll About MenialsAll About OratoryAlong Lake SuperiorA Lumber CampA Mountain SnowstormAnatomyAnecdotes of JusticeAnecdotes of the StageA New Autograph AlbumA New PlayAn Operatic EntertainmentAnswering an InvitationAnswers to CorrespondentsA Peaceable ManA Picturesque PicnicA Powerful SpeechArchimedesA ResignArnold WinkelreidAsking for a PassA Spencerian AssAstronomyA Thrilling ExperienceA Wallula NightB. Franklin, DeceasedBiography of SpartacusBoston Common and EnvironsBroncho SamBunker HillCare of House PlantsCatching a BuffaloCauses for ThanksgivingChinese JusticeChristopher ColumbusCome BackConcerning Book PublishingConcerning CoronersCrowns and Crowned HeadsDaniel WebsterDessicated MuleDogs and Dog DaysDoosedly Dilatory"Done It A-Purpose"Down East RumDr. Dizart's DogDrunk in a Plug HatEarly Day JusticeEccentricities of GeniusEccentricity in LunchEtiquette at HotelsEvery Man His Own Paper-HangerExtracts from a Queen's DiaryFarming in MaineFavored a Higher FineFifteen Years ApartFlying MachinesGeneral Sheridan's HorseGeorge the ThirdGreat Sacrifice of Bric-a-BracHabits of a Literary Man"Heap Brain"History of BabylonHours With Great MenHow Evolution EvolvesIn AcknowledgmentInsomnia in Domestic AnimalsIn Washington"I Spy"I Tried MillingJohn AdamsJohn Adams' DiaryJohn Adams' Diary, (No. 2. )John Adams' Diary, (No. 3. )Knights of the PenLetter from New YorkLetter to a CommunistLife Insurance as a Health RestorerLiterary FreaksLost MoneyLovely HorrorsMan OverboredMark AntonyMilling in PompeiiModern ArchitectureMore Paternal CorrespondenceMr. Sweeney's CatMurray and the MormonsMush and MelodyMy DogMy Experience as an AgriculturistMy Lecture AbroadMy MineMy PhysicianMy School DaysNeroNo More FrontierOn CyclonesOne Kind of FoolOur ForefathersParental AdvicePetticoats at the PollsPicnic IncidentsPlatoPolygamy as a Religious DutyPreventing a ScandalRailway EtiquetteRecollections of Noah WebsterRev. Mr. Hallelujah's HossRoller SkatingRosalindeSecond Letter to the PresidentShe Kind of Coaxed HimShortsSixty Minutes in AmericaSkimming the Milky WaySomnambulism and CrimeSpinal MeningitisSpringSquaw JimSquaw Jim's ReligionStirring Incidents at a FireStrabismus and JusticeStreet Cars and CuriositiesTaxidermyThe Amateur CarpenterThe Approaching HumoristThe Arabian LanguageThe Average HenThe Bite of a Mad DogThe Blase Young ManThe Board of TradeThe Cell NestThe Chinese GodThe Church DebtThe Cow BoyThe CropsThe Duke of RawhideThe Expensive WordThe Heyday of LifeThe Holy TerrorThe Indian OratorThe Little Barefoot BoyThe Miner at HomeThe NewspaperThe Old SouthThe Old SubscriberThe Opium HabitThe Photograph HabitThe Poor Blind PigThe Sedentary HenThe Silver DollarThe Snake IndianThe Story of a StrugglerThe Wail of a WifeThe Warrior's OrationThe Ways of DoctorsThe Weeping WomanThe Wild CowThey FellTime's ChangesTo a Married ManTo an Embryo PoetTo Her MajestyTo The President-ElectTwombley's TaleTwo Ways of Telling ItVeniceVerona"We"What We EatWoman's Wonderful InfluenceWoodtick William's StoryWords About WashingtonWrestling With the Mazy"You Heah Me, Sah!"

[Illustration: WE WERE NOT ON TERMS OF INTIMACY. ]

My School Days. 

Looking over my own school days, there are so many things that I wouldrather not tell, that it will take very little time and space for me touse in telling what I am willing that the carping public should know aboutmy early history. 

I began my educational career in a log school house. Finding that othergreat men had done that way, I began early to look around me for a logschool house where I could begin in a small way to soak my system full ofhard words and information. 

For a time I learned very rapidly. Learning came to me with very littleeffort at first. I would read my lesson over once or twice and then takemy place in the class. It never bothered me to recite my lesson and so Istood at the head of the class. I could stick my big toe through aknot-hole in the floor and work out the most difficult problem. Thisbecame at last a habit with me. With my knot-hole I was safe, without it Iwould hesitate. 

A large red-headed boy, with feet like a summer squash and eyes like thoseof a dead codfish, was my rival. He soon discovered that I was verydependent on that knot-hole, and so one night he stole into the schoolhouse and plugged up the knot-hole, so that I could not work my toe intoit and thus refresh my memory. 

Then the large red-headed boy, who had not formed the knot-hole habit wentto the head of the class and remained there. 

After I grew larger, my parents sent me to a military school. That iswhere I got the fine military learning and stately carriage that I stillwear. 

My room was on the second floor, and it was very difficult for me to leaveit at night, because the turnkey locked us up at 9 o'clock every evening. Still, I used to get out once in a while and wander around in thestarlight. I did not know yet why I did it, but I presume it was a kind ofsomnambulism. I would go to bed thinking so intently of my lessons that Iwould get up and wander away, sometimes for miles, in the solemn night. 

One night I awoke and found myself in a watermelon patch. I was never soashamed in my life. It is a very serious thing to be awakened so rudelyout of a sound sleep, by a bull dog, to find yourself in the watermelonvineyard of a man with whom you are not acquainted. I was not on terms ofsocial intimacy with this man or his dog. They did not belong to our set. We had never been thrown together before. 

After that I was called the great somnambulist and men who had watermelonconservatories shunned me. But it cured me of my somnambulism. I havenever tried to somnambule any more since that time. 

There are other little incidents of my schooldays that come trooping up inmy memory at this moment, but they were not startling in their nature. Mine is but the history of one who struggled on year after year, trying todo better, but most always failing to connect. The boys of Boston would dowell to study carefully my record and then--do differently. 

Recollections of Noah Webster. 

Mr. Webster, no doubt, had the best command of language of any Americanauthor prior to our day. Those who have read his ponderous but ratherdisconnected romance known as "Websters Unabridged Dictionary, or How OneWord Led on to Another. " will agree with me that he was smart. Noah neverlacked for a word by which to express himself. He was a brainy man and agood speller. 

It would ill become me at this late day to criticise Mr. Webster's greatwork--a work that is now in almost every library, school-room and countinghouse in the land. It is a great book. I do believe that had Mr. Websterlived he would have been equally fair in his criticism of my books. 

I hate to compare my own works with those of Mr. Webster, because it mayseem egotistical in me to point out the good points in my literary labors;but I have often heard it said, and so do not state it solely upon my ownresponsibility, that Mr. Webster's book does not retain the interest ofthe reader all the way through. 

He has tried to introduce too many characters, and so we cannot followthem all the way through. It is a good book to pick up and while away anidle hour with, perhaps, but no one would cling to it at night till thefire went out, chained to the thrilling plot and the glowing career of itshero. 

Therein consists the great difference between Mr. Webster and myself. Afriend of mine at Sing Sing once wrote me that from the moment he got holdof my book, he never left his room till he finished it. He seemed chainedto the spot, he said, and if you can't believe a convict, who is entirelyout of politics, who in the name of George Washington can you believe?

Mr. Webster was most assuredly a brilliant writer, and I have discoveredin his later editions 118, 000 words, no two of which are alike. This showsgreat fluency and versatility, it is true, but we need something else. Thereader waits in vain to be thrilled by the author's wonderful wordpainting. There is not a thrill in the whole tome. I had heard so much ofMr. Webster that when I read his book I confess I was disappointed. It iscold, methodical and dispassionate in the extreme. 

As I said, however, it is a good book to pick up for the purpose ofwhiling away an idle moment, and no one should start out on a long journeywithout Mr. Webster's tale in his pocket. It has broken the monotony ofmany a tedious trip for me. 

Mr. Webster's "Speller" was a work of less pretentions, perhaps, and yetit had an immense sale. Eight years ago this book had reached a sale of40, 000, 000, and yet it had the same grave defect. It was disconnected, cold, prosy and dull. I read it for years, and at last became a closestudent of Mr. Webster's style, yet I never found but one thing in thisbook, for which there seems to have been such a perfect stampede, that waseven ordinarily interesting, and that was a little gem. It was sothrilling in its details, and so diametrically different from Mr. Webster's style, that I have often wondered who he got to write it forhim. It related to the discovery of a boy by an elderly gentleman, in thecrotch of an ancestral apple tree, and the feeling of bitterness andanimosity that sprung up at the time between the boy and the elderlygentleman. 

Though I have been a close student of Mr. Webster for years, I am free tosay, and I do not wish to do an injustice to a great man in doing so, thathis ideas of literature and my own are entirely dissimilar. Possibly hisbook has had a little larger sale than mine, but that makes no difference. When I write a book it must engage the interest of the reader, and showsome plot to it. It must not be jerky in its style and scattering in itsstatements. 

I know it is a great temptation to write a book that will sell, but weshould have a higher object than that. 

I do not wish to do an injustice to a man who has done so much for theworld, and one who could spell the longest word without hesitation, but Ispeak of these things just as I would expect people to criticise my work. If we aspire to monkey with the literati of our day we must expect to becriticised. That's the way I look at it. 

P. S. --I might also state that Noah Webster was a member of theLegislature of Massachusetts at one time, and though I ought not to throwit up to him at this date, I think it is nothing more than right that thepublic should know the truth. 

To Her Majesty. 

To Queen Victoria, Regina Dei Gracia and acting mother-in-law on the side:

Dear Madame. --Your most gracious majesty will no doubt be surprised to hearfrom me after my long silence. One reason that I have not written for sometime is that I had hoped to see you ere this, and not because I had growncold. I desire to congratulate you at this time upon your great success asa mother-in-law, and your very exemplary career socially. As a queen youhave given universal satisfaction, and your family have married well. 

[Illustration: ADVERTISING THE ENTERPRISE. ]

But I desired more especially to write you in relation to another matter. We are struggling here in America to establish an authors' internationalcopyright arrangement, whereby the authors of all civilized nations may beprotected in their rights to the profits of their literary labor, and themovement so far has met with generous encouragement. As an author wedesire your aid and endorsement. Could you assist us? We are giving thisseason a series of authors' readings in New York to aid in prosecuting thework, and we would like to know whether we could not depend upon you totake a part in these readings, rendering selections from your late work. 

I assure your most gracious majesty that you would meet some of our bestliterary people while here, and no pains would be spared to make yourvisit a pleasant one, aside from the reading itself. We would advertiseyour appearance extensively and get out a first-class audience on theoccasion of your debut here. 

[Illustration: QUEEN VIC. READING. ]

An effort would be made to provide passes for yourself, and reduced rates, I think, could be secured for yourself and suite at the hotels. Of courseyou could do as you thought best about bringing suite, however. Some ofus travel with our suites and some do not. I generally leave my suite athome, myself. 

You would not need to make any special change as to costume for theoccasion. We try to make it informal, so far as possible, and though someof us wear full dress we do not make that obligatory on those who take apart in the exercises. If you decide to wear your every-day reigningclothes it will not excite comment on the part of our literati. We do notjudge an author or authoress by his or her clothes. 

You will readily see that this will afford you an opportunity to appearbefore some of the best people of New York, and at the same time you willaid in a deserving enterprise. 

It will also promote the sale of your book. 

Perhaps you have all the royalty you want aside from what you may receivefrom the sale of your works, but every author feels a pardonable pride ingetting his books into every household. 

I would assure your most gracious majesty that your reception here as anauthoress will in no way suffer because you are an unnaturalizedforeigner. Any alien who feels a fraternal interest in the internationaladvancement of thought and the universal encouragement of the good, thetrue and the beautiful in literature, will be welcome on these shores. 

This is a broad land, and we aim to be a broad and cosmopolitan people. Literature and free, willing genius are not hemmed in by State or nationallinos. They sprout up and blossom under tropical skies no less thanbeneath the frigid aurora borealis of the frozen North. We hail true meritjust as heartily and uproariously on a throne as we would anywhere else. In fact, it is more deserving, if possible, for one who has never tried itlittle knows how difficult it is to sit on a hard throne all day and writewell. We are to recognize struggling genius wherever it may crop out. Itis no small matter for an almost unknown monarch to reign all day and thenwrite an article for the press or a chapter for a serial story, only, perhaps, to have it returned by the publishers. All these things aredrawbacks to a literary life, that we here in America know little of. 

I hope your most gracious majesty will decide to come, and that you willpardon this long letter. It will do you good to get out this way for a fewweeks, and I earnestly hope that you will decide to lock up the house andcome prepared to make quite a visit. We have some real good authors herenow in America, and we are not ashamed to show them to any one. They arenot only smart, but they are well behaved and know how to appear incompany. We generally read selections from our own works, and can have abrass band to play between the selections, if thought best. For myself, Iprefer to have a full brass band accompany me while I read. The audiencealso approves of this plan. 

[Illustration: THE ACCOMPANIMENT. ]

We have been having some very hot weather here for the past week, but it isnow cooler. Farmers are getting in their crops in good shape, but wheat isstill low in price, and cranberries are souring on the vines. All of ourcanned red raspberries worked last week, and we had to can them overagain. Mr. Riel, who went into the rebellion business in Canada lastwinter, will be hanged in September if it don't rain. It will be his firstappearance on the gallows, and quite a number of our leading Americancriminals are going over to see his debut. 

Hoping to hear from you by return mail or prepaid cablegram, I beg leaveto remain your most gracious and indulgent majesty's humble and obedientservant. 

Bill Nye. 

Habits of a Literary Man. 

The editor of an Eastern health magazine, having asked for informationrelative to the habits, hours of work, and style and frequency of feedadopted by literary men, and several parties having responded who were nomore essentially saturated with literature than I am, I now take my pen inhand to reveal the true inwardness of my literary life, so that boys, whomay yearn to follow in my footsteps and wear a laurel wreath the year roundin place of a hat, may know what the personal habits of a literary partyare. 

I rise from bed the first thing in the morning, leaving my couch notbecause I am dissatisfied with it, but because I cannot carry it with meduring the day. 

I then seat myself on the edge of the bed and devote a few moments tothought. Literary men who have never set aside a few moments on rising forthought will do well to try it. 

I then insert myself into a pair of middle-aged pantaloons. It is needlessto say that girls who may have a literary tendency will find little tointerest them here. 

Other clothing is added to the above from time to time. I then bathemyself. Still this is not absolutely essential to a literary life. Otherswho do not do so have been equally successful. 

Some literary people bathe before dressing. 

I then go down stairs and out to the barn, where I feed the horse. Someliterary men feel above taking care of a horse, because there is reallynothing in common between the care of a horse and literature, butsimplicity is my watchword. T. Jefferson would have to rise early in theday to eclipse me in simplicity. I wish I had as many dollars as I havegot simplicity. 

I then go in to breakfast. This meal consists almost wholly of food. I ampassionately fond of food, and I may truly say, with my hand on my heart, that I owe much of my great success in life to this inward craving, thisconstant yearning for something better. 

During this meal I frequently converse with my family. I do not feel abovemy family, at least, if I do, I try to conceal it as much as possible. Buckwheat pancakes in a heated state, with maple syrup on the upper side, are extremely conducive to literature. Nothing jerks the mental facultiesaround with greater rapidity than buckwheat pancakes. 

After breakfast the time is put in to good advantage looking forward tothe time when dinner will be ready. From 8 to 10 A. M. , however, Ifrequently retire to my private library hot-bed in the hay mow, and write1, 200 words in my forthcoming book, the price of which will be $2. 50 incloth and $4 with Russia back. 

I then play Copenhagen with some little girls 21 years of age, who livenear by, and of whom I am passionately fond. 

After that I dig some worms, with a view to angling. I then angle. Afterthis I return home, waiting until dusk, however, as I do not like toattract attention. Nothing is more distasteful to a truly good man ofwonderful literary acquirements, and yet with singular modesty, than thecoarse and rude scrutiny of the vulgar herd. 

In winter I do not angle. I read the "Pirate Prince" or the "Missourian'sMash, " or some other work, not so much for the plot as the style, that Imay get my mind into correct channels of thought I then play "old sledge"in a rambling sort of manner. I sometimes spend an evening at home, inorder to excite remark and draw attention to my wonderful eccentricity. 

I do not use alcohol in any form, if I know it, though sometimes I ambasely deceived by those who know of my peculiar prejudice, and who do it, too, because they enjoy watching my odd and amusing antics at the time. 

Alcohol should be avoided entirely by literary workers, especially youngwomen. There can be no more pitiable sight to the tender hearted, than ayoung woman of marked ability writing an obituary poem while under theinfluence of liquor. 

I knew a young man who was a good writer. His penmanship was very good, indeed. He once wrote an article for the press while under the influenceof liquor. He sent it to the editor, who returned it at once with a coldand cruel letter, every line of which was a stab. The letter came at atime when he was full of remorse. 

He tossed up a cent to see whether he should blow out his brains or gointo the ready-made clothing business. The coin decided that he should dieby his own hand, but his head ached so that he didn't feel like shootinginto it. So he went into the ready-made clothing business, and now he paystaxes on $75, 000, so he is probably worth $150, 000. This, of course, salves over his wounded heart, but he often says to me that he might havebeen in the literary business to-day if he had let liquor alone. 

A Father's Letter. 

My dear son. --Your letter of last week reached us yesterday, and I enclose$13, which is all I have by me at the present time. I may sell the othershote next week and make up the balance of what you wanted. I willprobably have to wear the old buffalo overcoat to meetings again thiswinter, but that don't matter so long as you are getting an education. 

I hope you will get your education as cheap as you can, for it cramps yourmother and me like Sam Hill to put up the money. Mind you, I don'tcomplain. I knew education come high, but I didn't know the clothes costso like sixty. 

I want you to be so that you can go anywhere and spell the hardest word. Iwant you to be able to go among the Romans or the Medes and Persians andtalk to any of them in their own native tongue. 

I never had any advantages when I was a boy, but your mother and I decidedthat we would sock you full of knowledge, if your liver held out, regardless of expense. We calculate to do it, only we want you to go asslow on swallowtail coats as possible till we can sell our hay. 

Now, regarding that boat-paddling suit, and that baseball suit, and thatbathing suit, and that roller-rinktum suit, and that lawn-tennis suit, mind, I don't care about the expense, because you say a young man can'treally educate himself thoroughly without them, but I wish you'd send homewhat you get through with this fall, and I'll wear them through the winterunder my other clothes. We have a good deal severer winters here than weused to, or else I'm failing in bodily health. Last winter I tried to gothrough without underclothes, the way I did when I was a boy, but aManitoba wave came down our way and picked me out of a crowd with its eyesshet. 

In your last letter you alluded to getting injured in a little "hazingscuffle with a pelican from the rural districts. " I don't want any harm tocome to you, my son, but if I went from the rural districts and anotheryoung gosling from the rural districts undertook to haze me, I would meethim when the sun goes down, and I would swat him across the back of theneck with a fence board, and then I would meander across the pit of hisstomach and put a blue forget-me-not under his eye. 

Your father aint much on Grecian mythology and how to get the square rootof a barrel of pork, but he wouldn't allow any educational institutions tohaze him with impunity. Perhaps you remember once when you tried to hazeyour father a little, just to kill time, and how long it took you torecover. Anybody that goes at it right can have a good deal of fun withyour father, but those who have sought to monkey with him, just to breakup the monotony of life, have most always succeeded in finding what theysought. 

[Illustration: RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. ]

I ain't much of a pensman, so you will have to excuse this letter. We areall quite well, except old Fan, who has a galded shoulder, and hope thiswill find you enjoying the same great blessing. 

Your Father. 

Archimedes. 

Archimedes, whose given name has been accidentally torn off and swallowedup in oblivion, was born in Syracuse, 2, 171 years ago last spring. He wasa philosopher and mathematical expert. During his life he was neversuccessfully stumped in figures. It ill befits me now, standing by hisnew-made grave, to say aught of him that is not of praise. We can onlymourn his untimely death, and wonder which of our little band of great menwill be the next to go. 

Archimedes was the first to originate and use the word "Eureka. " It hasbeen successfully used very much lately, and as a result we have theEureka baking powder, the Eureka suspender, the Eureka bed-bug buster, theEureka shirt, and the Eureka stomach bitters. Little did Archimedes wot, when he invented this term, that it would come into such general use. 

Its origin has been explained before, but it would not be out of placehere for me to tell it as I call it to mind now, looking back overArchie's eventful life. 

King Hiero had ordered an eighteen karat crown, size 7-1/8, and, afterreceiving it from the hands of the jeweler, suspected that it had beenadulterated. He therefore applied to Archimedes to ascertain, if possible, whether such was the case or not. Archimedes had just got in on No. 3, twohours late, and covered with dust. He at once started for a hot and coldbath emporium on Sixteenth street, meantime wondering how the dickens hewould settle that crown business. 

He filled the bath-tub level full, and, piling up his raiment on thefloor, jumped in. Displacing a large quantity of water, equal to his ownbulk, he thereupon solved the question of specific gravity, and, forgetting his bill, forgetting his clothes, he sailed up Sixteenth streetand all over Syracuse, clothed in shimmering sunlight and a plain goldring, shouting "Eureka!" He ran head-first into a Syracuse policeman andhowled "Eureka!" The policeman said: "You'll have to excuse me; I don'tknow him. " He scattered the Syracuse Normal school on its way home, andtried to board a Fifteenth street bob-tail car, yelling "Eureka!" Thecar-driver told him that Eureka wasn't on the car, and referred Archimedesto a clothing store. 

Everywhere he was greeted with surprise. He tried to pay his car-fare, butfound that he had left his money in his other clothes. 

Some thought it was the revised statute of Hercules; that he had becomeweary of standing on his pedestal during the hot weather, and had startedout for fresh air. I give this as I remember it. The story is foundered onfact. 

Archimedes once said: "Give me where I may stand, and I will move theworld. " I could write it in the original Greek, but, fearing that thenonpareil delirium tremens type might get short, I give it in the Englishlanguage. 

It may be tardy justice to a great mathematician and scientist, but I havea few resolutions of respect which I would be very glad to get printed onthis solemn occasion, and mail copies of the paper to his relatives andfriends:

"WHEREAS, It has pleased an All-wise Providence to remove from our midstArchimedes, who was ever at the front in all deserving labors andenterprises; and

"WHEREAS, We can but feebly express our great sorrow in the loss ofArchimedes, whose front name has escaped our memory; therefore

"_Resolved_, That in his death we have lost a leading citizen of Syracuse, and one who never shook his friends--never weakened or gigged back onthose he loved. 

"_Resolved_, That copies of these resolutions will be spread on themoments of the meeting of the Common Council of Syracuse, and that they bepublished in the Syracuse papers eodtfpdq&cod, and that marked copies ofsaid papers be mailed to the relatives of the deceased. "

To the President-Elect. 

Dear Sir. --The painful duty of turning over to you the administration ofthese United States and the key to the front door of the White House hasbeen assigned to me. You will find the key hanging inside the storm-door, and the cistern-pole up stairs in the haymow of the barn. I have made agreat many suggestions to the outgoing administration relative to thetransfer of the Indian bureau from the department of the Interior to thatof the sweet by-and-by. The Indian, I may say, has been a great source ofannoyance to me, several of their number having jumped one of my mostvaluable mining claims on White river. Still, I do not complain of that. This mine, however, I am convinced would be a good paying property ifproperly worked, and should you at any time wish to take the regular armyand such other help as you may need and re-capture it from our redbrothers, I would be glad to give you a controlling interest in it. 

[Illustration: A DEARTH OF SOAP IN THE LAUNDRY AND BATH-ROOM. ]

You will find all papers in their appropriate pigeon-holes, and a smalljar of cucumber pickles down cellar, which were left over and to which youwill be perfectly welcome. The asperities and heart burnings that were theimmediate result of a hot and unusually bitter campaign are now allburied. Take these pickles and use them as though they were your own. Theyare none too good for you. You deserve them. We may differ politically, but that need not interfere with our warm personal friendship. 

You will observe on taking possession of the administration, that the navyis a little bit weather-beaten and wormy. I would suggest that it be newlypainted in the spring. If it had been my good fortune to receive amajority of the suffrages of the people for the office which you now hold, I should have painted the navy red. Still, that need not influence you inthe course which you may see fit to adopt. 

There are many affairs of great moment which I have not enumerated in thisbrief letter, because I felt some little delicacy and timidity aboutappearing to be at all dictatorial or officious about a matter wherein thepublic might charge me with interference. 

I hope you will receive the foregoing in a friendly spirit, and whateveryour convictions may be upon great questions of national interest, eitherforeign or domestic, that you will not undertake to blow out the gas onretiring, and that you will in other ways realize the fond anticipationswhich are now cherished in your behalf by a mighty people whose aggregatedeye is now on to you. 

Bill Nye. 

P. S. --You will be a little surprised, no doubt, to find no soap in thelaundry or bath-rooms. It probably got into the campaign in some way andwas absorbed. 

B. N. 

Anatomy. 

The word anatomy is derived from two Greek spatters and three polywogs, which, when translated, signify "up through" and "to cut, " so that anatomyactually, when translated from the original wappy-jawed Greek, means tocut up through. That is no doubt the reason why the medical studentproceeds to cut up through the entire course. 

[Illustration: STUDYING ANATOMY. ]

Anatomy is so called because its best results are obtained from thecutting or dissecting of organism. For that reason there is a growingdemand in the neighborhood of the medical college for good second-handorganisms. Parties having well preserved organisms that they are notactually using, will do well to call at the side door of the medicalcollege after 10 P. M. 

The branch of the comparative anatomy which seeks to trace the unities ofplan which are exhibited in diverse organisms, and which discovers, as faras may be, the principles which govern the growth and development oforganized bodies, and which finds functional analogies and structuralhomologies, is denominated philosophical or transcendental anatomy. (Thisstatement, though strictly true, is not original with me. )

Careful study of the human organism after death, shows traces offunctional analogies and structural homologies in people who were supposedto have been in perfect health all their lives Probably many of those wemeet in the daily walks of life, many, too, who wear a smile and outwardlyseem happy, have either one or both of these things. A man may live afalse life and deceive his most intimate friends in the matter ofanatomical analogies or homologies, but he cannot conceal it from theeagle eye of the medical student. The ambitious medical student makes aspecialty of true inwardness. 

The study of the structure of animals is called zootomy. The attempt tostudy the anatomical structure of the grizzly bear from the inside has notbeen crowned with success. When the anatomizer and the bear have beenthrown together casually, it has generally been a struggle between the twoorganisms to see which would make a study of the structure of the other. Zootomy and moral suasion are not homogeneous, analogous, nor indigenous. 

Vegetable anatomy is called phytonomy, sometimes. But it would not be safeto address a vigorous man by that epithet. We may call a vegetable that, however, and be safe. 

Human anatomy is that branch of anatomy which enters into the descriptionof the structure and geographical distribution of the elements of a humanbeing. It also applies to the structure of the microbe that crawls out ofjail every four years just long enough to whip his wife, vote and go backagain. 

Human anatomy is either general, specific, topographical or surgical. Those terms do not imply the dissection and anatomy of generals, specialists, topographers and surgeons, as they might seem to imply, butreally mean something else. I would explain here what they actually domean if I had more room and knew enough to do it. 

Anatomists divide their science, as well as their subjects, intofragments. Osteology treats of the skeleton, myology of the muscles, angiology of the blood vessels, splanchology the digestive organs ordepartment of the interior, and so on. 

People tell pretty tough stories of the young carvists who study anatomyon subjects taken from life. I would repeat a few of them here, but theyare productive of insomnia, so I will not give them. 

I visited a matinee of this kind once for a short time, but I have notbeen there since. When I have a holiday now, the idea of spending it inthe dissecting-room of a large and flourishing medical college does notoccur to me. 

I never could be a successful surgeon, I fear. While I have no hesitationabout mutilating the English, I have scruples about cutting up othernationalities. I should always fear, while pursuing my studies, that Imight be called upon to dissect a friend, and I could not do that. Ishould like to do anything that would advance the cause of science, but Ishould not want to form the habit of dissecting people, lest some day Imight be called upon to dissect a friend for whom I had a greatattachment, or some creditor who had an attachment for me. 

[Illustration]

Mr. Sweeney's Cat. 

Robert Ormsby Sweeney is a druggist of St. Paul, and though a recentchronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descendant of asure-enough king, and though there is mighty good purple, royal blood inhis veins that dates back where kings used to have something to do to earntheir salary, he goes right on with his regular business, selling drugs atthe great sacrifice which druggists will make sometimes in order to placetheir goods within the reach of all. 

As soon as I learned that Mr. Sweeney had barely escaped being a crownedhead, I got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up, and I told himthat people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible, and that as ithadn't shown itself in his family for years he might perhaps finally wearit out. 

He is a mighty pleasant man to meet, anyhow, and you can have just as muchfun with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal blood inhis veins. You could be with him for days on a fishing trip and nevernotice it at all. 

But I was going to speak more in particular about Mr. Sweeney's cat. Mr. Sweeney had a large cat, named Dr. Mary Walker, of which he was very fond. Dr. Mary Walker remained at the drug store all the time, and was known allover St. Paul as a quiet and reserved cat. If Dr. Mary Walker took in thetown after office hours, nobody seemed to know anything about it. Shewould be around bright and cheerful the next morning and attend to herduties at the store just as though nothing whatever had happened. 

One day last summer Mr. Sweeney left a large plate of fly-paper with wateron it in the window, hoping to gather in a few quarts of flies in adeceased state. Dr. Mary Walker used to go to this window during theafternoon and look out on the busy street while she called up pleasantmemories of her past life. That afternoon she thought she would call upsome more memories, so she went over on the counter and from there jumpeddown on the window-sill, landing with all four feet in the plate offly-paper. 

At first she regarded it as a joke, and treated the matter very lightly, but later on she observed that the fly-paper stuck to her feet with greattenacity of purpose. Those who have never seen the look of surprise anddeep sorrow that a cat wears when she finds herself glued to a whole sheetof fly-paper, cannot fully appreciate the way Dr. Mary Walker felt. Shedid not dash wildly through a $150 plate-glass window, as some cats wouldhave done. She controlled herself and acted in the coolest manner, thoughyou could have seen that mentally she suffered intensely. She sat down amoment to more fully outline a plan for the future. In doing so, she madea great mistake. The gesture resulted in glueing the fly-paper to herperson in such a way that the edge turned up behind in the most abruptmanner, and caused her great inconvenience. 

[Illustration: AT FIRST SHE REGARDED IT AS A JOKE. ]

Some one at that time laughed in a coarse and heartless way, and I wishyou could have seen the look of pain that Dr. Mary Walker gave him. 

Then she went away. She did not go around the prescription case as therest of us did, but strolled through the middle of it, and so on outthrough the glass door at the rear of the store. We did not see her gothrough the glass door, but we found pieces of fly-paper and fur on theragged edges of a large aperture in the glass, and we kind of jumped atthe conclusion that Dr. Mary Walker had taken that direction in retiringfrom the room. 

Dr. Mary Walker never returned to St. Paul, and her exact whereabouts arenot known, though every effort was made to find her. Fragments of flypaperand brindle hair were found as far west as the Yellowstone National Park, and as far north as the British line, but the doctor herself was notfound. My own theory is, that if she turned her bow to the west so as tocatch the strong easterly gale on her quarter, with the sail she had setand her tail pointing directly toward the zenith, the chances for Dr. MaryWalker's immediate return are extremely slim. 

[Illustration]

The Heyday of Life. 

There will always be a slight difference in the opinions of the young andthe mature, relative to the general plan on which the solar system shouldbe operated, no doubt. There are also points of disagreement in othermatters, and it looks as though there always would be. 

To the young the future has a more roseate hue. The roseate hue comeshigh, but we have to use it in this place. To the young there spreads outacross the horizon a glorious range of possibilities. After the youth hasendorsed for an intimate friend a few times, and purchased the paper atthe bank himself later on, the horizon won't seem to horizon sotumultuously as it did aforetime. I remember at one time of purchasingsuch a piece of accommodation paper at a bank, and I still have it. Ididn't need it any more than a cat needs eleven tails at one and the sametime. Still the bank made it an object for me, and I secured it. Suchthings as these harshly knock the flush and bloom off the cheek of youth, and prompt us to turn the strawberry box bottom side up before we purchaseit. 

Youth is gay and hopeful, age is covered with experience and scars wherethe skin has been knocked off and had to grow on again. To the young adollar looks large and strong, but to the middle-aged and the old it isweak and inefficient. 

When we are in the heyday and fizz of existence, we believe everything;but after awhile we murmur: "What's that you are givin' us, " or words oflike character. Age brings caution and a lot of shop-worn experience, purchased at the highest market price. Time brings vain regrets and wisdomteeth that can be left in a glass of water over night. 

Still we should not repine. If people would repine less and try harder toget up an appetite by persweating in someone's vineyard at so much perdiem, it would be better. The American people of late years seem to have adeeper and deadlier repugnance for mannish industry, and there seems to bea growing opinion that our crops are more abundant when saturated withforeign perspiration. European sweat, if I may be allowed to use such alow term, is very good in its place, but the native-born Duke of Dakota, or the Earl of York State should remember that the matter of perspirationand posterity should not be left solely to the foreigner. 

There are too many Americans who toil not, neither do they spin. Theywould be willing to have an office foisted upon them, but they wouldrather blow their so-called brains out than to steer a pair of largesteel-gray mules from day to day. They are too proud to hoe corn, for fearsome great man will ride by and see the termination of their shirtsextending out through the seats of their pantaloons, but they are not tooproud to assign their shattered finances to a friend and their shatteredremains to the morgue. 

Pride is all right if it is the right kind, but the pride that prompts aman to kill his mother, because she at last refuses to black his boots anymore, is an erroneous pride. The pride that induces a man to muss up thecarpet with his brains because there is nothing left for him to do but tolabor, is the kind that Lucifer had when he bolted the action of theconvention and went over to the red-hot minority. 

Youth is the spring-time of life. It is the time to acquire information, so that we may show it off in after years and paralyze people with what weknow. The wise youth will "lay low" till he gets a whole lot of knowledge, and then in later days turn it loose in an abrupt manner. He will guardagainst telling what he knows, a little at a time. That is unwise. I onceknew a youth who wore himself out telling people all he knew from day today, so that when he became a bald-headed man he was utterly exhausted anddidn't have anything left to tell anyone. Some of the things that we knowshould be saved for our own use. The man who sheds all his knowledge, anddon't leave enough to keep house with, fools himself. 

They Fell. 

Two delegates to the General Convocation of the Sons of Ice Water weresitting in the lobby of the Windsor, in the city of Denver, not long ago, strangers to each other and to everybody else. One came from Huerfernocounty, and the other was a delegate from the Ice Water Encampment ofCorrejos county. 

From the beautiful billiard hall came the sharp rattle of ivory balls, andin the bar-room there was a glitter of electric light, cut glass, andFrench plate mirrors. Out of the door came the merry laughter of the giddythrong, flavored with fragrant Havana smoke and the delicate odor of lemonand mirth and pine apple and cognac. 

The delegate from Correjos felt lonely, and he turned to the Ice Waterrepresentative from Huerferno:

"That was a bold and fearless speech you made this afternoon on the demonrum at the convocation. "

"Think so?" said the sad Huerferno man. 

"Yes, you entered into the description of rum's maniac till I could almostsee the red-eyed centipedes and tropical hornets in the air. How could youdescribe the jimjams so graphically?"

"Well, you see, I'm a reformed drunkard. Only a little while ago I was inthe gutter. "

"So was I. "

"How long ago?"

"Week ago day after to-morrow. "

"Next Tuesday it'll be a week since I quit. "

"Well, I swan!"

"Ain't it funny?"

"Tolerable. "

"It's going to be a long, cold winter; don't you think so?"

"Yes, I dread it a good deal. "

"It's a comfort, though, to know that you never will touch rum again. "

"Yes, I am glad in my heart to-night that I am free from it. I shall nevertouch rum again. "

When he said this he looked up at the other delegate, and they looked intoeach other's eyes earnestly, as though each would read the other's soul. Then the Huerferno man said:

"In fact, I never did care much for rum. "

Then there was a long pause. 

Finally the Correjos man ventured: "Do you have to use an antidote to curethe thirst?"

"Yes, I've had to rely on that a good deal at first. Probably this vainyearning that I now feel in the pit of the bosom will disappear afterawhile. "

"Have you got any antidote with you?"

"Yes, I've got some up in 232-1/2. If you'll come up I'll give you adose. "

"There's no rum in it, is there?"

"No. "

Then they went up the elevator. They did not get down to breakfast, but atdinner they stole in. Tho man from Huerferno dodged nervously through thearchway leading to the dining-room as though he had doubts about gettingthrough so small a space with his augmented head, and the man fromCorrejos looked like one who had wept his eyes almost blind over the woethat rum has wrought in our fair land. 

When the waiter asked the delegate from Correjos for his dessert order, the red-nosed Son of Ice Water said: "Bring me a cup of tea, some puddingwithout wine sauce, and a piece of mince pie. You may also bring me acorkscrew, if you please, to pull the brandy out of the mince pie with. "

Then the two reformed drunkards looked at each other, and laughed ahoarse, bitter and joyous laugh. 

At the afternoon session of the Sons of Ice Water, the Huerferno delegatecouldn't get his regalia over his head. 

Second Letter to the President. 

To the President. --I write this letter not on my own account, but onbehalf of a personal friend of mine who is known as a mugwump. He is agreat worker for political reform, but he cannot spell very well, so hehas asked me to write this letter. He knew that I had been thrown amonggreat men all my life, and that, owing to my high social position and fineeducation, I would be peculiarly fitted to write you in a way that wouldnot call forth disagreeable remarks, and so he has given me the points andI have arranged them for you. 

In the first place, my friend desires me to convey to you, Mr. President, in a delicate manner, and in such language as to avoid giving offense, that he is somewhat disappointed in your Cabinet. I hate to talk this wayto a bran-new President, but my friend feels hurt and he desires that Ishould say to you that he regrets your short-sighted policy. He says thatit seems to him there is very little in the course of the administrationso far to encourage a man to shake off old party ties and try to make menbetter. He desires to say that after conversing with a large number of thepurest men, men who have been in both political parties off and on foryears and yet have never been corrupted by office, men who have leftconvention after convention in years past because those conventions werecorrupt and endorsed other men than themselves for office, he finds thatyour appointment of Cabinet officers will only please two classes, viz:Democrats and Republicans. 

[Illustration: WORKING FOR REFORM. ]

Now, what do you care for an administration which will only gratify thosetwo old parties? Are you going to snap your fingers in disdain at men whoadmit that they are superior to anybody else? Do you want history tochronicle the fact that President Cleveland accepted the aid of the pureand highly cultivated gentlemen who never did anything naughty orunpretty, and then appointed his Cabinet from men who had been known foryears as rude, naughty Democrats?

My friend says that he feels sure you would not have done so if you hadfully realized how he felt about it. He claims that in the first week ofyour administration you have basely truckled to the corrupt majority. Youhave shown yourself to be the friend of men who never claimed to be trulygood. 

If you persist in this course you will lose the respect and esteem of myfriend and another man who is politically pure, and who has never smirchedhis escutcheon with an office. He has one of the cleanest and mostvigorous escutcheons in that county. He never leaves it out over nightduring the summer, and in the winter he buries it in sawdust. Both ofthese men will go back to the Republican party in 1888 if you persist inthe course you have thus far adopted. They would go back now if theRepublican party insisted on it. 

Mr. President, I hate to write to you in this tone of voice, because Iknow the pain it will give you. I once held an office myself, Mr. President, and it hurt my feelings very much to have a warm personalfriend criticise my official acts. 

The worst feature of the whole thing, Mr. President, is that it willencourage crime. If men who never committed any crime are allowed to earntheir living by the precarious methods peculiar to manual labor, and ifthose who have abstained from office for years, by request of manycitizens, are to be denied the endorsement of the administration, theywill lose courage to go on and do right in the future. My friend desiresto state vicariously, in the strongest terms, that both he and his wifefeel the same way about it, and they will not promise to keep it quiet anylonger. They feel like crippling the administration in every way they canif the present policy is to be pursued. 

He says he dislikes to begin thus early to threaten a President who hasbarely taken off his overshoes and drawn his mileage, but he thinks it mayprevent a recurrence of these unfortunate mistakes. He claims that youhave totally misunderstood the principles of the mugwumps all the waythrough. You seem to regard the reform movement as one introduced for thepurpose of universal benefit. This was not the case. While fully endorsingand supporting reform, he says that they did not go into it merely to killtime or simply for fun. He also says that when he became a reformer andsupported you, he did not think there were so many prominent Democrats whowould have claims upon you. He can only now deplore the great nationalpoverty of offices and the boundless wealth of raw material in theDemocratic party from which to supply even that meagre demand. 

He wishes me to add, also, that you must have over-estimated the zeal ofhis party for civil service reform. He says that they did not yearn forcivil service reform so much as many people seem to think. 

I must now draw this letter to a close. We are all well with the exceptionof colds in the head, but nothing that need give you any uneasiness. Ourlarge seal-brown hen last week, stimulated by a rising egg market, over-exerted herself, and on Saturday evening, as the twilight gathered, she yielded to a complication of pip and softening of the brain andexpired in my arms. She certainly led a most exemplary life and the forkedtongue of slander could find naught to utter against her. 

Hoping that you are enjoying the same great blessing and that you willwrite as often as possible without waiting for me, I remain, Very respectfully yours, Bill Nye. 

[Dictated Letter. ]

Milling in Pompeii. 

While visiting Naples, last fall, I took a great interest in the wonderfulmuseum there, of objects that have been exhumed from the ruins of Pompeii. It is a remarkable collection, including, among other things, thecumbersome machinery of a large woolen factory, the receipts, contracts, statements of sales, etc. , etc. , of bankers, brokers, and usurers. I wastold that the exhumist also ran into an Etruscan bucket-shop in one partof the city, but, owing to the long, dry spell, the buckets had fallen topieces. 

The object which engrossed my attention the most, however, was what seemsto have been a circular issued prior to the great volcanic vomit of 79A. D. , and no doubt prior even to the Christian era. As the date is tornoff however, we are left to conjecture the time at which it was issued. Iwas permitted to make a copy of it, and with the aid of my hired man, Ihave translated it with great care. 

Office of Lucretius & Procalus, Dealers InFlour, Bran, Shorts, Middlings, Screenings, Etruscan Hen Feed, and OtherChoice Bric-A-Brac. 

_Highest Cash Price Paid for Neapolitan Winter Wheat and Roman Corn

Why haul your Wheat through the sand to Herculaneum when we pay the sameprice here?_

Office and Mill, Via VIII, Near the Stabian Gate, Only Thirteen BlocksFrom the P. O. , Pompeii. 

Dear Sir: This circular has been called out by another one issued lastmonth by Messrs. Toecorneous & Chilblainicus, alleged millers and wheatbuyers of Herculaneum, in which they claim to pay a quarter to a half-centmore per bushel than we do for wheat, and charge us with docking thefarmers around Pompeii a pound per bushel more than necessary for cockle, wild buck-wheat, and pigeon-grass seed. They make the broad statement thatwe have made all our money in that way, and claim that Mr. Lucretius, ofour mill, has erected a fine house, which the farmers allude to as the"wild buckwheat villa. "

[Illustration: TWO OLD ROMANS. ]

We do not, as a general rule, pay any attention to this kind of stuff; butwhen two snide romans, who went to Herculaneum without a dollar and drankstale beer out of an old Etruscan tomato-can the first year they werethere, assail our integrity, we feel justified in making a prompt andfinal reply. We desire to state to the Roman farmers that we do not testtheir wheat with the crooked brass tester that has made more money forMessrs. Toecorneous & Chilblainicus than their old mill has. We do not dothat kind of business. Neither do we buy a man's wheat at a cash price andthen work off four or five hundred pounds of XXXX Imperial hog feed on himin part payment. When we buy a man's wheat we pay him in money. We do notseek to fill him up with sour Carthagenian cracked wheat and orders on thestore. 

We would also call attention to the improvements that we have just made inour mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have alsoengaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crankday-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so thatthe mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head millerhas gone to his meals or stopped to spit on his hands. 

The mill of our vile contemporaries at Herculaneum is an old one that wasused around Naples one hundred years ago to smash rock for the Neapolitanroad, and is entirely out of repair. It was also used in a brick-yard herenear Pompeii; then an old junk man sold it to a tenderfoot from Jerusalemas an ice-cream freezer. He found that it would not work, and so used itto grind up potato bugs for blisters. Now it is grinding ostensible flourat Herculaneum. 

We desire to state to the farmers about Pompeii and Herculaneum that weaim to please. We desire to make a grade of flour this summer that willnot have to be run through the coffee mill before it can be used. We willalso pay you the highest price for good wheat, and give you good weight. Our capacity is now greatly enlarged, both as to storage and grinding. Wenow turn out a sack of flour, complete and ready for use, every littlewhile. We have an extra handle for the mill, so that in case of accidentto the one now in use, we need not shut down but a few moments. We callattention to our XXXX Git-there brand of flour. It is the best flour inthe market for making angels' food and other celestial groceries. We fullywarrant it, and will agree that for every sack containing whole kernels ofcorn, corncobs, or other foreign substances, not thoroughly pulverized, wewill refund the money already paid, and show the person through our mill. 

[Illustration: ANCIENT ROMAN MILLER. ]

We would also like to call the attention of farmers and housewives aroundPompeii to our celebrated Dough Squatter. It is purely automatic in itsoperation, requiring only two men to work it. With this machine two menwill knead all the bread they can eat and do it easily, feeling thoroughlyrefreshed at night. They also avoid that dark maroon taste in the mouth socommon in Pompeii on arising in the morning. 

To those who do not feel able to buy one of these machines, we would saythat we have made arrangements for the approaching season, so that thosewho wish may bring their dough to our mammoth squatter and get it treatedat our place at the nominal price of two bits per squat. Strangers callingfor their squat or unsquat dough, will have to be identified. 

Do not forget the place, Via VIII, near Stabian gate. 

Lucretius & Peocalus, Dealers in choice family flour, cut feed and oatmeal with or withoutclinkers in it. Try our lumpless bran for indigestion. 

Broncho Sam. 

Speaking about cowboys, Sam Stewart, known from Montana to Old Mexico asBroncho Sam, was the chief. He was not a white man, an Indian, a greaseror a negro, but he had the nose of an Indian warrior, the curly hair of anAfrican, and the courtesy and equestrian grace of a Spaniard. A widereputation as a "broncho breaker" gave him his name. 

To master an untamed broncho and teach him to lead, to drive and to besafely-ridden was Sam's mission during the warm weather when he was notriding the range. His special delight was to break the war-like heart ofthe vicious wild pony of the plains and make him the servant of man. 

I've seen him mount a hostile "bucker, " and, clinching his italic legsaround the body of his adversary, ride him till the blood would burst fromSam's nostrils and spatter horse and rider like rain. Most everyone knowswhat the bucking of the barbarous Western horse means. The wild horseprobably learned it from the antelope, for the latter does it the sameway, i. E. , he jumps straight up into the air, at the same instantcurving his back and coming down stiff-legged, with all four of his feetin a bunch. The concussion is considerable. 

I tried it once myself. I partially rode a roan broncho one spring day, which will always be green in my memory. The day, I mean, not the broncho. 

It occupied my entire attention to safely ride the cunning little beast, and when he began to ride me I put in a minority report against it. 

I have passed through an earthquake and an Indian outbreak, but I wouldrather ride an earthquake without saddle or bridle than to bestride asuccessful broncho eruption. I remember that I wore a large pair ofMexican spurs, but I forgot them until the saddle turned. Then Iremembered them. Sitting down on them in an impulsive way brought them tomy mind. Then the broncho steed sat down on me, and that gave the spurs anopportunity to make a more lasting impression on my mind. 

To those who observed the charger with the double "cinch" across his backand the saddle in front of him like a big leather corset, sitting at thesame time on my person, there must have been a tinge of amusement; but tome it was not so frolicsome. 

There may be joy in a wild gallop across the boundless plains, in thecrisp morning, on the back of a fleet broncho; but when you return withyour ribs sticking through your vest, and find that your nimble steed hasreturned to town two hours ahead of you, there is a tinge of sadness aboutit all. 

Broncho Sam, however, made a specialty of doing all the riding himself. Hewouldn't enter into any compromise and allow the horse to ride him. 

In a reckless moment he offered to bet ten dollars that he could mount andride a wild Texas steer. The money was put up. That settled it. Sam nevertook water. This was true in a double sense. Well, he climbed thecross-bar of the corral-gate, and asked the other boys to turn out theirbest steer, Marquis of Queensbury rules. 

As the steer passed out, Sam slid down and wrapped those parentheticallegs of his around that high-headed, broad-horned brute, and he rode himtill the fleet-footed animal fell down on the buffalo grass, ran his hotred tongue out across the blue horizon, shook his tail convulsively, swelled up sadly and died. 

It took Sam four days to walk back. 

A ten-dollar bill looks as large to me as the star spangled banner, sometimes; but that is an avenue of wealth that had not occurred to me. 

I'd rather ride a buzz-saw at two dollars a day and found. 

[Illustration: A BRONCO ERUPTION. ]

How Evolution Evolves. 

The following paper was read by me in a clear, resonant tone of voice, before the Academy of Science and Pugilism at Erin Prairie, last month, and as I have been so continually and so earnestly importuned to print itthat life was no longer desirable, I submit it to you for that purpose, hoping that you will print my name in large caps, with astonishers at thehead of the article, and also in good display type at the close:

Some Features Of Evolution. 

No one could possibly, in a brief paper, do the subject of evolution fulljustice. It is a matter of great importance to our lost and undone race. It lies near to every human heart, and exercises a wonderful influenceover our impulses and our ultimate success or failure. When we pause toconsider the opaque and fathomless ignorance of the great masses of ourfellow men on the subject of evolution, it is not surprising that crime israther on the increase, and that thousands of our race are annuallyfilling drunkards' graves, with no other visible means of support, whilemultitudes of enlightened human beings are at the same time obtaining alivelihood by meeting with felons' dooms. 

These I would ask in all seriousness and in a tone of voice that wouldmelt the stoniest heart: "Why in creation do you do it?" The time israpidly approaching when there will be two or three felons for each doom. I am sure that within the next fifty years, and perhaps sooner even thanthat, instead of handing out these dooms to Tom, Dick and Harry asformerly, every applicant for a felon's doom will have to pass through acompetitive examination, as he should do. 

It will be the same with those who desire to fill drunkards' graves. Thetime is almost here when all positions of profit and trust will becarefully and judiciously handed out, and those who do not fit themselvesfor those positions will be left in the lurch, whatever that may be. 

It is with this fact glaring me in the face that I have consented toappear before you to-day and lay bare the whole hypothesis, history, riseand fall, modifications, anatomy, physiology and geology of evolution. Itis for this that I have poured over such works as Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Moses in the bulrushes, Anaxagoras, Lucretius and Hoyle. It is for thepurpose of advancing the cause of common humanity and to jerk the risinggeneration out of barbarism into the dazzling effulgence of clashingintellects and fermenting brains that I have sought the works ofPythagoras, Democritus and Epluribus. Whenever I could find any book thatbore upon the subject of evolution, and could borrow it, I have done sowhile others slept. 

That is a matter which rarely enters into the minds of those who go easilyand carelessly through life. Even the general superintendent of theAcademy of Science and Pugilism here in Erin Prairie, the hotbed of a freeand untrammeled, robust democracy, does not stop to think of the midnightand other kinds of oil that I have consumed in order to fill myself fullof information and to soak my porous mind with thought. Even the O'ReillyCollege of this place, with its strong mental faculty, has not informeditself fully relative to the great effort necessary before a lecturer mayspeak clearly, accurately and exhaustingly of evolution. 

And yet, here in this place, where education is rampant, and the idea ispatted on the back, as I may say; here in Erin Prairie, where progress andsome other sentiments are written on everything; here where I amaddressing you to-night for $2 and feed for my horse, I met a little childwith a bright and cheerful smile, who did not know that evolutionconsisted in a progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. 

So you see that you never know where ignorance lurks. The hydra-headedupas tree and bete noir of self-acting progress, is such ignorance asthat, lurking in the very shadow of magnificent educational institutionsand hard words of great cast. Nothing can be more disagreeable to thescientist than a bete noir. Nothing gives him greater satisfaction than tochase it up a tree or mash it between two shingles. 

For this reason, as I said, it gives me great pleasure to address you onthe subject of evolution, and to go into details in speaking of it. Icould go on for hours as I have been doing, delighting you with theintricacies and peculiarities of evolution, but I must desist. It wouldplease me to do so, and you would no doubt remain patiently and listen, but your business might suffer while you were away, and so I will close, but I hope that anyone now within the sound of my voice, and in whosebreast a sudden hunger for more light on this great subject may havesprung up, will feel perfectly free to call on me and ask me about it orimmerse himself in the numerous tomes that I have collected from friends, and which relate to this matter. 

In closing I wish to say that I have made no statements in this paperrelative to evolution which I am not prepared to prove; and, if anything, I have been over-conservative. For that reason I say now, that the personwho doubts a single fact as I have given it to-night, bearing upon thegreat subject of evolution, will have to do so over my dumb remains. 

And a man who will do that is no gentleman. I presume that many of thesestatements will be snapped up and sharply criticised by other theologiansand many of our foremost thinkers, but they will do well to pause beforethey draw me into a controversy, for I have other facts in relation toevolution, and some personal reminiscences and family history, which I amprepared to introduce, if necessary, together with ideas that I havethought up myself. So I say to those who may hope to attract notice andobtain notoriety by drawing me into a controversy, beware. It will be toyour interest to beware!

Hours With Great Men. 

I presume that I could write an entire library of personal reminiscencesrelative to the eminent people with whom I have been thrown during a busylife, but I hate to do it, because I always regarded such things as sacredfrom the vulgar eye, and I felt bound to respect the confidence of aprominent man just as much as I would that of one who was less before thepeople. I remember very well my first meeting with General W. T. Sherman. I would not mention it here if it were not for the fact that the peopleseem so be yearning for personal reminiscences of great men, and that isperfectly right, too. 

It was since the war that I met General Sherman, and it was on the line ofthe Union Pacific Railway, at one of those justly celebratedeating-houses, which I understand are now abandoned. The colored waiterhad cut off a strip of the omelette with a pair of shears, the scorchedoatmeal had been passed around, the little rubber door mats fried inbutter and called pancakes had been dealt around the table, and thecashier at the end of the hall had just gone through the clothes of aparty from Vermont, who claimed a rebate on the ground that the waiter hadrefused to bring him anything but his bill. There was no sound in thedining-room except the weak request of the coffee for more air andstimulants, or perhaps the cry of pain when the butter, while practicingwith the dumb-bells, would hit a child on the head; then all would bestill again. 

General Sherman sat at one end of the table, throwing a life-preserver toa fly in the milk pitcher. 

We had never met before, though for years we had been plodding alonglife's rugged way--he in the war department, I in the postofficedepartment. Unknown to each other, we had been holding up opposite cornersof the great national fabric, if you will allow me that expression. 

I remember, as well as though it were but yesterday, how the conversationbegan. General Sherman looked sternly at me and said:

"I wish you would overpower that butter and send it up this way. "

"All right, " said I, "if you will please pass those molasses. "

That was all that was said, but I shall never forget it, and probably henever will. The conversation was brief, but yet how full of food forthought! How true, how earnest, how natural! Nothing stilted or falseabout it. It was the natural expression of two minds that were too greatto be verbose or to monkey with social, conversational flapdoodle. 

[Illustration: AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE BUTTER. ]

I remember, once, a great while ago, I was asked by a friend to go withhim in the evening to the house of an acquaintance, where they were goingto have a kind of musicale, at which there was to be some noted pianist, who had kindly consented to play a few strains, I did not get the name ofthe professional, but I went, and when the first piece was announced I sawthat the light was very uncertain, so I kindly volunteered to get a lampfrom another room. I held that big lamp, weighing about twenty-ninepounds, for half an hour, while the pianist would tinky tinky up on theright hand, or bang, boomy to bang down on the bass, while he snorted andslugged that old concert grand piano and almost knocked its teeth down itsthroat, or gently dawdled with the keys like a pale moonbeam shimmeringthrough the bleached rafters of a deceased horse, until at last there wasa wild jangle, such as the accomplished musician gives to an instrument toshow the audience that he has disabled the piano, and will take a slightintermission while it is sent to the junk shop. 

With a sigh of relief I carefully put down the twenty-nine pound lamp, andmy friend told me that I had been standing there like liberty enlighteningthe world, and holding that heavy lamp for Blind Tom. 

I had never seen him before, and I slipped out of the room before he had achance to see me. 

Concerning Coroners. 

I am glad to notice that in the East there is a growing disfavor in thepublic mind for selecting a practicing physician for the office ofcoroner. This matter should have attracted attention years ago. Now itgratifies me to notice a finer feeling on the part of the people, and anawakening of those sensibilities which go to make life more highly prizedand far more enjoyable. 

I had the misfortune at one time to be under the medical charge of acoroner who had graduated from a Chicago morgue and practiced medicinealong with his inquest business with the most fiendish delight. I do notknow which he enjoyed best, holding the inquest or practicing on hispatient and getting the victim ready for the quest. 

One day he wrote out a prescription and left it for me to have filled. Iwas surprised to find that he had made a mistake and left a rough draft ofthe verdict in my own case and a list of jurors which he had made inmemorandum, so as to be ready for the worst. I was alarmed, for I did notknow that I was in so dangerous a condition. He had the advantage of me, for he knew just what he was giving me, and how long human life could besustained under his treatment. I did not. 

That is why I say that the profession of medicine should not be allowed toconflict with the solemn duties of the coroner. They are constantlyclashing and infringing upon each other's territory. This coroner had akind of tread-softly-bow-the-head way of getting around the room that mademy flesh creep. He had a way, too, when I was asleep, of glancinghurriedly through the pockets of my pantaloons as they hung over a chair, probably to see what evidence he could find that might aid the jury inarriving at a verdict. Once I woke up and found him examining a draft thathe had found in my pocket. I asked him what he was doing with my funds, and he said that he thought he detected a draft in the room and he hadjust found out where it came from. 

After that I hoped that death would come to my relief as speedily aspossible. I felt that death would be a happy release from the cold touchof the amateur coroner and pro tem physician. I could look forward withpleasure, and even joy, to the moment when my physician would come for thelast time in his professional capacity and go to work on me officially. Then the county would be obliged to pay him, and the undertaker could takecharge of the fragments left by the inquest. 

The duties of the physician are with the living, those of the coroner withthe dead. No effort, therefore, should be made to unite them. It is inviolation of all the finer feelings of humanity. When the physiciandecides that his tendencies point mostly toward immortality and the namesof his patients are nearly all found on the moss-covered stones of thecemetery, he may abandon the profession with safety and take hold ofpolitics. Then, should his tastes lead him to the inquest, let himgravitate toward the office of coroner; but the two should not be united. 

No man ought to follow his fellow down the mysterious river that definesthe boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge himprofessionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to thecounty for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest overthe debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wishto encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenmentwhich will be in strong contrast with the darker and more ignorant epochsof time, when the practice of medicine was united with the profession ofthe barber, the well-digger, the farrier, the veterinarian or the coroner. 

Why, this physician plenipotentiary and coroner extraordinary that I havereferred to, didn't know when he got a call whether to take his morphinesyringe or his venire for a jury. He very frequently went to see a patientwith a lung tester under one arm and the revised statutes under the other. People never knew when they saw him going to a neighbor's house, whetherthe case had yielded to the coroner's treatment or not. No one ever knewjust when over-taxed nature would yield to the statutes in such case madeand provided. 

When the jury was impanelled, however, we always knew that the medicaltreatment had been successfully fatal. 

Once he charged the county with an inquest he felt sure of, but in thenight the patient got delirious, eluded his nurse, the physician andcoroner, and fled to the foot-hills, where he was taken care of andfinally recovered. 

The experiences of some of the patients who escaped from this man readmore like fiction than fact. One man revived during the inquest, knockedthe foreman of the jury through the window, kicked the coroner in thestomach, fed him a bottle of violet ink, and, with a shriek of laughter, fled. He is now traveling under an assumed name with a mammoth circus, feeding his bald head to the African lion twice a day at $9 a week andfound. 

[Illustration]

Down East Rum. 

Rum has always been a curse to the State of Maine. The steady fight thatMaine has made, for a century past, against decent rum, has been worthy ofa better cause. 

Who hath woe? who hath sorrow and some more things of that kind? He thatmonkeyeth with Maine rum; he that goeth to seek emigrant rum. 

In passing through Maine the tourist is struck with the ever-varyingstyles of mystery connected with the consumption of rum. 

In Denver your friend says: "Will you come with me and shed a tear?" or"Come and eat a clove with me. "

In Salt Lake City a man once said to me: "William, which would you ratherdo, take a dose of Gentile damnation down here on the corner, or go overacross the street and pizen yourself with some real old Mormon Valley tan, made last week from ground feed and prussic acid?" I told him that I hadjust been to dinner, and the doctor had forbidden my drinking any more, and that I had promised several people on their death beds never to touchliquor, and besides, I had just taken a large drink, so he would have toexcuse me. 

But in Maine none of these common styles of invitation prevail. It is allshrouded in mystery. You give the sign of distress to any member in goodstanding, pound three times on the outer gate, give two hard kicks and onesoft one on the inner door, give the password, "Rutherford B. Hayes, " turnto the left, through a dark passage, turn the thumbscrew of a mysteriousgas fixture 90 deg. To the right, holding the goblet of the encampmentunder the gas fixture, then reverse the thumbscrew, shut your eyes, insultyour digester, leave twenty-five cents near the gas fixture, and hunt upthe nearest cemetery, so that you will not have to be carried very far. 

If a man really wants to drink himself into a drunkard's grave, he cancertainly save time by going to Maine. Those desiring the most prompt andvigorous style of jim-jams at cut rates will do well to examine Mainegoods before going elsewhere. Let a man spend a week in Boston, where theMaine liquor law, I understand, is not in force, and then, with no warningwhatever, be taken into the heart of Maine; let him land there a strangerand a partial orphan, with no knowledge of the underground methods ofsecuring a drink, and to him the world seems very gloomy, very sad, andextremely arid. 

At the Bangor depot a woman came up to me and addressed me. She was ratherpast middle age, a perfect lady in her manners, but a little full. 

I said: "Madam, I guess you will have to excuse me. You have theadvantage. I can't just speak your name at this moment. It has been nowthirty years since I left Maine, a child two years old. So people havechanged. You've no idea how people have grown out of my knowledge. I don'tsee but you look just as young as you did when I went away, but I'm a poorhand to remember names, so I can't just call you to mind. "

She was perfectly ladylike in her manner, but a little bit drunk. It issingular how drunken people will come hundreds of miles to converse withme. I have often been alluded to as the "drunkard's friend. " Men have beenknown to get intoxicated and come a long distance to talk with me on somesubject, and then they would lean up against me and converse by the hour. A drunken man never seems to get tired of talking with me. As long as I amwilling to hold such a man up and listen to him, he will stand and tell meabout himself with the utmost confidence, and, no matter who goes by, hedoes not seem to be ashamed to have people see him talking with me. 

[Illustration: THAT BUTTONHOLE. ]

I once had a friend who was very much liked by every one, so he driftedinto politics. For seven years he tried to live on free whiskey andpopular approval, but it wrecked him at last. Finally he formed the habitof meeting me every day and explaining it to me, and giving me freeexhibitions of a breath that he had acquired at great expense. After hegot so feeble that he could not walk any more, this breath of his used topull him out of bed and drag him all over town. It don't seem hardlypossible, but it is so. I can show you the town yet. 

He used to take me by the buttonhole when he conversed with me. This is adiagram of the buttonhole. 

If I had a son I would warn him against trying to subsist solely onpopular approval and free whiskey. It may do for a man engaged solely insedentary pursuits, but it is not sufficient in cases of great muscularexhaustion. Free whiskey and popular approval on an empty stomach arehighly injurious. 

Railway Etiquette. 

Many people have traveled all their lives and yet do not know how tobehave themselves when on the road. For the benefit and guidance of such, these few crisp, plain, horse-sense rules of etiquette have been framed. 

In traveling by rail on foot, turn to the right on discovering anapproaching train. If you wish the train to turn out, give two loud tootsand get in between the rails, so that you will not muss up the right ofway. Many a nice, new right of way has been ruined by getting a pedestriantourist spattered all over its first mortgage. 

On retiring at night on board the train, do not leave your teeth in theice-water tank. If every one should do so, it would occasion greatconfusion in case of wreck. It would also cause much annoyance and delayduring the resurrection. Experienced tourists tie a string to their teethand retain them during the night. 

If you have been reared in extreme poverty, and your mother supported youuntil you grew up and married, so that your wife could support you, youwill probably sit in four seats at the same time, with your feet extendedinto the aisles so that you can wipe them off on other people, while yousnore with your mouth open clear to your shoulder blades. 

If you are prone to drop to sleep and breathe with a low death rattle, like the exhaust of a bath tub, it would be a good plan to tie up yourhead in a feather bed and then insert the whole thing in the linen closet;or, if you cannot secure that, you might stick it out of the window andget it knocked off against a tunnel. The stockholders of the road mightget mad about it, but you could do it in such a way that they wouldn'tknow whose head it was. 

Ladies and gentlemen should guard against traveling by rail while in abeastly state of intoxication. 

In the dining car, while eating, do not comb your moustache with yourfork. By all means do not comb your moustache with the fork of another. Itis better to refrain altogether from combing the moustache with a forkwhile traveling, for the motion of the train might jab the fork into youreye and irritate it. 

If your desert is very hot and you do not discover it until you haveburned the rafters out of the roof of your mouth, do not utter a wild yellof agony and spill your coffee all over a total stranger, but controlyourself, hoping to know more next time. 

In the morning is a good time to find out how many people have succeededin getting on the passenger train, who ought to be in the stock car. 

Generally, you will find one male and one female. The male goes into thewash room, bathes his worthless carcass from daylight until breakfasttime, walking on the feet of any man who tries to wash his face duringthat time. He wipes himself on nine different towels, because when he getshome, he knows he will have to wipe his face on an old door mat. Peoplewho have been reared on hay all their lives, generally want to fillthemselves full of pie and colic when they travel. 

The female of this same mammal, goes into the ladies' department andremains there until starvation drives her out. Then the real ladies haveabout thirteen seconds apiece in which to dress. 

If you never rode in a varnished car before, and never expect to again, you will probably roam up and down the car, meandering over the feet ofthe porter while he is making up the berths. This is a good way to letpeople see just how little sense you had left after your brain began tosoften. 

In traveling, do not take along a lot of old clothes that you know youwill never wear. 

B. Franklin, Deceased. 

Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Boston, came very near being an only child. If seventeen children had not come to bless the home of Benjamin'sparents, they would have been childless. Think of getting up in themorning and picking out your shoes and stockings from among seventeenpairs of them. Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family whereyou would be called upon, every morning, to select your own cud of sprucegum from a collection of seventeen similar cuds stuck on a window sill. And yet B. Franklin never murmured or repined. He desired to go to sea, and to avoid this he was apprenticed to his brother James, who was aprinter. It is said that Franklin at once took hold of the greatArchimedean lever, and jerked it early and late in the interests offreedom. It is claimed that Franklin at this time invented the deadlyweapon known as the printer's towel. He found that a common crash towelcould be saturated with glue, molasses, antimony, concentrated lye, androller composition, and that after a few years of time and perspiration itwould harden so that the "Constant Reader" or "Veritas" could be stabbedwith it and die soon. 

[Illustration: A DEADLY ONSLAUGHT. ]

Many believe that Franklin's other scientific experiments were productiveof more lasting benefit to mankind than this, but I do not agree withthem. 

This paper was called the _New England Courant_. It was edited jointly byJames and Benjamin Franklin, and was started to supply a long-felt want. Benjamin edited a part of the time and James a part of the time. The ideaof having two editors was not for the purpose of giving volume to theeditorial page, but it was necessary for one to run the paper while theother was in jail. In those days you couldn't sass the king, and then, when the king came in the office the next day and stopped his paper, andtook out his ad. , you couldn't put it off on "our informant" and go rightalong with the paper. You had to go to jail, while your subscriberswondered why their paper did not come, and the paste soured in the tindippers in the sanctum, and the circus passed by on the other side. 

[Illustration: STOPPING HIS PAPER. ]

How many of us to-day, fellow journalists, would be willing to stay injail while the lawn festival and the kangaroo came and went? Who, of allour company, would go to a prison cell for the cause of freedom while adouble-column ad. Of sixteen aggregated circuses, and eleven congresses offerocious beasts, fierce and fragrant from their native lair, went by us?

At the age of 17, Ben got disgusted with his brother, and went toPhiladelphia and New York, where he got a chance to "sub" for a few weeks, and then got a regular "sit. " Franklin was a good printer, and finally gotto be a foreman. He made an excellent foreman, sitting by the hour in thecomposing room and spitting on the stone, while he cussed the make-up andpress work of the other papers. Then he would go into the editorial roomsand scare the editors to death with a wild shriek for more copy. He knewjust how to conduct himself as a foreman, so that strangers would think heowned the paper. 

In 1730, at the age of 24, Franklin married and established the_Pennsylvania Gazette_. He was then regarded as a great man, and mosteveryone took his paper. Franklin grew to be a great journalist, andspelled hard words with great fluency. He never tried to be a humorist inany of his newspaper work, and everybody respected him. 

Along about 1746 he began to study the construction and habits oflightning, and inserted a local in his paper, in which he said that hewould be obliged to any of his readers who might notice any new or oddspecimens of lightning, if they would send them into the _Gazette_ officeby express for examination. Every time there was a thunder storm, Franklinwould tell the foreman to edit the paper, and, armed with a string and anold fruit jar, he would go out on the hills and get enough lightning for amess. 

[Illustration: "HOW'S TRADE?"]

In 1753 Franklin was made postmaster-general of the colonies. He made agood postmaster-general, and people say there were less mistakes indistributing their mail than there has ever been since. If a man mailed aletter in those days, old Ben Franklin saw that it went where it wasaddressed. 

Franklin frequently went over to England in those days, partly onbusiness, and partly to shock the king. He used to delight in going to thecastle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively speaking, andattract a good deal of attention. It looked odd to the English, of course, to see him come into the royal presence, and, leaving his wet umbrella upagainst the throne, ask the king: "How's trade?" Franklin never put on anyfrills, but he was not afraid of a crowned head. He used to say, frequently, that to him a king was no more than a seven spot. 

He did his best to prevent the Revolutionary war, but he couldn't do it, Patrick Henry had said that the war was inevitable, and given itpermission to come, and it came. He also went to Paris and got acquaintedwith a few crowned heads there. They thought a good deal of him in Paris, and offered him a corner lot if he would build there and start a paper. They also promised him the county printing, but he said no, he would haveto go back to America, or his wife might get uneasy about him. 

Franklin wrote "Poor Richard's Almanac" in 1732-57, and it was republishedin England. Benjamin Franklin had but one son, and his name was William. William was an illegitimate son, and, though he lived to be quite an oldman, he never got over it entirely, but continued to be but anillegitimate son all his life. Everybody urged him to do differently, buthe steadily refused to do so. 

Life Insurance as a Health Restorer. 

Life insurance is a great thing. I would not be without it. My health isgreatly improved since I got my new policy. Formerly I used to have aseal-brown taste in my mouth when I arose in the morning, but that hasentirely disappeared. I am more hopeful and happy, and my hair is gettingthicker on top. I would not try to keep house without life insurance. LastSeptember I was caught in one of the most destructive cyclones that evervisited a republican form of government. A great deal of property wasdestroyed and many lives were lost, but I was spared. People who had noinsurance were mowed down on every hand, but aside from a broken leg I wasentirely unharmed. 

[Illustration: PROTECTED BY LIFE INSURANCE. ]

I look upon life insurance as a great comfort, not only to thebeneficiary, but to the insured, who very rarely lives to realize anythingpecuniarily from his venture. Twice I have almost raised my wife toaffluence and cast a gloom over the community in which I lived, butsomething happened to the physician for a few days so that he could notattend to me, and I recovered. For nearly two years I was under thedoctor's care. He had his finger on my pulse or in my pocket all the time. He was a young western physician, who attended me on Tuesdays and Fridays. The rest of the week he devoted his medical skill to horses that werementally broken down. He said he attended me largely for my society. Ifelt flattered to know that he enjoyed my society after he had been thrownamong horses all the week that had much greater advantages than I. 

My wife at first objected seriously to an insurance on my life, and saidshe would never, never touch a dollar of the money if I were to die, butafter I had been sick nearly two years, and my disposition had suffered agood deal, she said that I need not delay the obsequies on that account. But the life insurance slipped through my fingers somehow, and Irecovered. 

In these days of dynamite and roller rinks, and the gory meat-ax of a newadministration, we ought to make some provision for the future. 

The Opium Habit. 

I have always had a horror of opiates of all kinds. They are so seductiveand so still in their operations. They steal through the blood like a wolfon the trail, and they seize upon the heart at last with their white fangstill it is still forever. 

Up the Laramie there is a cluster of ranches at the base of the MedicineBow, near the north end of Sheep Mountain, and in sight of the glittering, eternal frost of the snowy range. These ranches are the homes of the youngmen from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and now there are several"younger sons" of Old England, with herds of horses, steers and sheep, worth millions of dollars. These young men are not of the kind of whom themetropolitan ass writes as saying "youbetcherlife, " and calling everybody"pardner. " They are many of them college graduates, who can brand a wildMaverick or furnish the easy gestures for a Strauss waltz. 

They wear human clothes, talk in the United States language, and have abank account. This spring they may be wearing chaparajos and swinging aquirt through the thin air, and in July they may be at Long Branch, orcoloring a meerschaum pipe among the Alps. 

Well, a young man whom we will call Curtis lived at one of these ranchesyears ago, and, though a quiet, mind-your-own-business fellow, who hadabsolutely no enemies among his companions, he had the misfortune to incurthe wrath of a tramp sheep-herder, who waylaid Curtis one afternoon andshot him dead as he sat in his buggy. Curtis wasn't armed. He didn't dreamof trouble till he drove home from town, and, as he passed through thegates of a corral, saw the hairy face of the herder, and at the samemoment the flash of a Winchester rifle. That was all. 

A rancher came into town and telegraphed to Curtis' father, and then ahalf dozen citizens went out to help capture the herder, who had fled tothe sage brush of the foot-hills. 

They didn't get back till toward daybreak, but they brought the herderwith them, I saw him in the gray of the morning, lying in a coarse grayblanket, on the floor of the engine house. He was dead. 

I asked, as a reporter, how he came to his death, and they told me--opium!I said, did I understand you to say "ropium?" They said no, it was opium. The murderer had taken poison when he found that escape was impossible. 

I was present at the inquest, so that I could report the case. There wasvery little testimony, but all the evidence seemed to point to the factthat life was extinct, and a verdict of death by his own hand wasrendered. 

It was the first opium work I had ever seen, and it aroused my curiosity. Death by opium, it seems, leaves a dark purple ring around the neck. I didnot know this before. People who die by opium also tie their handstogether before they die. This is one of the eccentricities of opiumpoisoning that I have never seen laid down in the books. I bequeath it tomedical science. Whenever I run up against a new scientific discovery, Ijust hand it right over to the public without cost. 

Ever since the above incident, I have been very apprehensive about peoplewho seem to be likely to form the opium habit. It is one of the mostdeadly of narcotics, especially in a new country. High up in the puremountain atmosphere, this man could not secure enough air to prolong life, and he expired. In a land where clear, crisp air and delightful sceneryare abundant, he turned his back upon them both and passed away. Is it notsad to contemplate?

More Paternal Correspondence. 

My dear son. --I tried to write to you last week, but didn't get around toit, owing to circumstances. I went away on a little business tower for afew days on the cars, and then when I got home the sociable broke loose inour once happy home. 

While on my commercial tower down the Omehaw railroad buying a newwell-diggin' machine of which I had heard a good deal pro and con, I hadthe pleasure of riding on one of them sleeping-cars that we read so muchabout. 

I am going on 50 years old, and that's the first time I ever slumbered atthe rate of forty-five miles per hour, including stops. 

I got acquainted with the porter, and he blacked my boots in the nightunbeknownst to me, while I was engaged in slumber. He must have thoughtthat I was your father, and that we rolled in luxury at home all the time, and that it was a common thing for us to have our boots blacked bymenials. When I left the car this porter brushed my clothes till the hotflashes ran up my spinal column, and I told him that he had treated mesquare, and I rung his hand when he held it out toards me, and I told himthat at any time he wanted a good, cool drink of buttermilk, to justholler through our telephone. We had the sociable at our house last week, and when I got home your mother set me right to work borryin' chairs anddishes. She had solicited some cakes and other things. I don't knowwhether you are on the skedjule by which these sociables are run or not. The idea is a novel one to me. 

The sisters in our set, onct in so often, turn their houses wrong side outfor the purpose of raising four dollars to apply on the church debt. WhenI was a boy we worshiped with less frills than they do now. Now it seemsthat the debt is a part of the worship. 

Well, we had a good time and used up 150 cookies in a short time. Part ofthese cookies was devoured and the balance was trod into our all-woolcarpet. Several of the young people got to playing Copenhagen in thesetting-room and stepped on the old cat in such a way as to disfigure himfor life. They also had a disturbance in the front room and knocked offsome of the plastering. 

So your mother is feeling slim and I am not very chipper myself. I hopethat you are working hard at your books so that you will be an ornament tosociety. Society is needing some ornaments very much. I sincerely hopethat you will not begin to monkey with rum. I should hate to have you witha felon's doom or fill a drunkard's grave. If anybody has got to fill adrunkard's grave, let him do it himself. What has the drunkard ever donefor you, that you should fill his grave for him?

[Illustration: ROUGH ON THE OLD CAT. ]

I expect you to do right, as near as possible. You will not do exactlyright all the time, but try to strike a good average. I do not expect youto let your studies encroach, too much on your polo, but try to unite thetwo so that you will not break down under the strain. I should feel sadand mortified to have you come home a physical wreck. I think one physicalwreck in a family is enough, and I am rapidly getting where I can do theentire physical wreck business for our neighborhood. 

I see by your picture that you have got one of them pleated coats with abelt around it, and short pants. They make you look as you did when I usedto spank you in years gone by, and I feel the same old desire to do it nowthat I did then. Old and feeble as I am, it seems to me as though I couldspank a boy that wears knickerbocker pants buttoned onto a Garabaldy waistand a pleated jacket. If it wasn't for them cute little camel's hairwhiskers of yours I would not believe that you had grown to be a large, expensive boy, grown up with thoughts. Some of the thoughts you express inyour letters are far beyond your years. Do you think them yourself, or isthere some boy in the school that thinks all the thoughts for the rest?

Some of your letters are so deep that your mother and I can hardly grapplewith them. One of them, especially, was so full of foreign stuff that youhad got out of a bill of fare, that we will have to wait till you comehome before we can take it in. I can talk a little Chippewa, but that isall the foreign language I am familiar with. When I was young we had toget our foreign languages the best we could, so I studied Chippewa withouta master. A Chippewa chief took me into his camp and kept me there forsome time while I acquired his language. He became so much attached to methat I had great difficulty in coming away. I wish you would write in theUnited States dialect as much as possible, and not try to paralize yourparents with imported expressions that come too high for poor people. 

Remember that you are the only boy we've got, and we are only goingthrough the motions of living here for your sake. For us the day iswearing out, and it is now way long into the shank of the evening. All weask of you is to improve on the old people. You can see where I fooledmyself, and you can do better. Read and write, and sifer, and polo, andget nolledge, and try not to be ashamed of your uncultivated parents. 

When you get that checkered little sawed-off coat on, and that pair ofknee panties, and that poker-dot necktie, and the sassy little boys holler"rats" when you pass by, and your heart is bowed down, remember that, nomatter how foolish you may look, your parents will never sour on you. 

Your Father. 

Twombley's Tale. 

My name is Twombley, G. O. P. Twombley is my full name and I have had acheckered career. I thought it would be best to have my career checkedright through, so I did so. 

My home is in the Wasatch Mountains. Far up, where I can see the long, green, winding valley of the Jordan, like a glorious panorama below me, Idwell. I keep a large herd of Angora goats. That is my business. TheAngora goat is a beautiful animal--in a picture. But out of a picture hehas a style of perspiration that invites adverse criticism. 

Still, it is an independent life, and one that has its advantages, too. 

When I first came to Utah, I saw one day, in Salt Lake City, a young girlarrive. She was in the heyday of life, but she couldn't talk our language. Her face was oval; rather longer than it was wide, I noticed, and, thoughshe was still young, there were traces of care and other foreignsubstances plainly written there. 

She was an emigrant, about seventeen years of age, and, though she hadbeen in Salt Lake City an hour and a half, she was still unmarried. 

She was about the medium height, with blue eyes, that somehow, as youexamined them carefully in the full, ruddy light of a glorious Septemberafternoon, seemed to resemble each other. Both of them were that way, I know not what gave me the courage, but I stepped to her side, and in alow voice told her of my love and asked her to be mine. 

She looked askance at me. Nobody ever did that to me before and lived totell the tale. But her sex made me overlook it. Had she been any other sexthat I can think of, I would have resented it. But I would not strike awoman, especially when I had not been married to her and had no right todo so. 

I turned on my heel and I went away. I most always turn on my heel when Igo away. If I did not turn on my own heel when I went away, whose heelwould a lonely man like me turn upon?

Years rolled by. I did nothing to prevent it. Still that face came to mein my lonely hut far up in the mountains. That look still rankled in mymemory. Before that my memory had been all right. Nothing had ever rankledin it very much. Let the careless reader who never had his memory ranklein hot weather, pass this by. This story is not for him. 

After our first conversation we did not meet again for three years, andthen by the merest accident. I had been out for a whole afternoon, huntingan elderly goat that had grown childish and irresponsible. He had wanderedaway, and for several days I had been unable to find him. So I sought forhim till darkness found me several miles from my cabin. I realized at oncethat I must hurry back, or lose my way and spend the night in themountains. The darkness became more rapidly obvious. My way became moreand more uncertain. 

Finally I fell down an old prospect shaft. I then resolved to remain whereI was until I could decide what was best to be done. If I had known thatthe prospect shaft was there, I would have gone another way. There wasanother way that I could have gone, but it did not occur to me until toolate. 

I hated to spend the next few weeks in the shaft, for I had not locked upmy cabin when I left it, and I feared that someone might get in while Iwas absent and play on the piano. I had also set a batch of bread and twohens that morning, and all of these would be in sad knead of me before Icould get my business into such shape that I could return. 

I could not tell accurately how long I had been in the shaft, for I had nomatches by which to see my watch. I also had no watch. 

All at once, someone fell down the shaft. I knew that it was a woman, because she did not swear when she landed at the bottom. Still, this couldbe accounted for in another way. She was unconscious when I picked her up. 

I did not know what to do, I was perfectly beside myself, and so was she. I had read in novels that when a woman became unconscious people generallychafed her hands, but I did not know whether I ought to chafe the hands ofa person to whom I had never been introduced. 

I could have administered alcoholic stimulants to her but I had neglectedto provide myself with them when I fell down the shaft. This should be awarning to people who habitually go around the country without alcoholicstimulants. 

Finally she breathed a long sigh and murmured, "where am I?" I told herthat I did not know, but wherever it might be, we were safe, and thatwhatever she might say to me, I would promise her, should go no farther. 

Then there was a long pause. 

To encourage further conversation I asked her if she did not think we hadbeen having a rather backward spring. She said we had, but she prophesieda long, open fall. 

Then there was another pause, after which I offered her a seat on an oldred empty powder can. Still, she seemed shy and reserved. I would make aremark to which she would reply briefly, and then there would be a pauseof a little over an hour. Still it seemed longer. 

Suddenly the idea of marriage presented itself to my mind. If we never gotout of the shaft, of course an engagement need not be announced. No onehad ever plighted his or her troth at the bottom of a prospect shaftbefore. It was certainly unique, to say the least. I suggested it to her. 

She demurred to this on the ground that our acquaintance had been sobrief, and that we had never been thrown together before. I told her thatthis would be no objection, and that my parents were so far away that Idid not think they would make any trouble about it. 

She said that she did not mind her parents so much as she did the violenttemper of her husband. 

I asked her if her husband had ever indulged in polygamy. She replied thathe had, frequently. He had several previous wives. I convinced her that inthe eyes of the law, and under the Edmunds bill, she was not bound to him. Still she feared the consequences of his wrath. 

Then I suggested a desperate plan. We would elope!

I was now thirty-seven years old, and yet had never eloped. Neither hadshe. So, when the first streaks of rosy dawn crept across the soft, autumnal sky and touched the rich and royal coloring on the rugged sidesof the grim old mountains, we got out of the shaft and eloped. 

On Cyclones. 

I desire to state that my position as United States Cyclonist for thisJudicial District is now vacant. I resigned on the 9th day of September, A. D. 1884. 

I have not the necessary personal magnetism to look a cyclone in the eyeand make it quail. I am stern and even haughty in my intercourse with men, but when a Manitoba simoon takes me by the brow of my pantaloons andthrows me across Township 28, Range 18, West of the 5th PrincipalMeridian, I lose my mental reserve and become anxious and even taciturn. For thirty years I had yearned to see a grown up cyclone, of thering-tail-puller variety, mop up the green earth with huge forest treesand make the landscape look tired. On the 9th day of September, A. D. 1884, my morbid curiosity was gratified. 

As the people came out into the forest with lanterns and pulled me out ofthe crotch of a basswood tree with a "tackle and fall, " I remember I toldthem I didn't yearn for any more atmospheric phenomena. The old desire fora hurricane that would blow a cow through a penitentiary was satiated. Iremember when the doctor pried the bones of my leg together, in order tokind of draw my attention away from the limb, he asked me how I liked thefall style of Zephyr in that locality. 

I said it was all right, what there was of it. I said this in a tone ofbitter irony. 

Cyclones are of two kinds, viz: the dark maroon cyclone; and the iron graycyclone with pale green mane and tail. It was the latter kind I frolickedwith on the above-named date. 

My brother and I were riding along in the grand old forest, and I had justbeen singing a few bars from the opera of "Whoop 'em Up, Lizzie Jane, "when I noticed that the wind was beginning to sough through the trees. Soon after that, I noticed that I was soughing through the trees also, andI am really no slouch of a sougher, either, when I get started. 

The horse was hanging by the breeching from the bough of a large butternuttree, waiting for some one to come and pick him. 

[Illustration: WAITING TO BE PICKED. ]

I did not see my brother at first, but after a while he disengaged himselffrom a rail fence and came where I was hanging, wrong end up, with mypersonal effects spilling out of my pockets. I told him that as soon asthe wind kind of softened down, I wished he would go and pick the horse. He did so, and at midnight a party of friends carried me into town on astretcher. It was quite an ovation. To think of a torchlight processioncoming way out there into the woods at midnight, and carrying me into townon their shoulders in triumph! And yet I was once only a poor boy!

It shows what may be accomplished by anyone if he will persevere andinsist on living a different life. 

The cyclone is a natural phenomenon, enjoying the most robust health. Itmay be a pleasure for a man with great will power and an iron constitutionto study more carefully into the habits of the cyclone, but as far as I amconcerned, individually, I could worry along some way if we didn't have aphenomenon in the house from one year's end to another. 

As I sit here, with my leg in a silicate of soda corset, and watch themerry throng promenading down the street, or mingling in the giddytorchlight procession, I cannot repress a feeling toward a cyclone thatalmost amounts to disgust. 

The Arabian Language. 

The Arabian language belongs to what is called the Semitic or Shemiticfamily of languages, and, when written, presents the appearance of ageneral riot among the tadpoles and wrigglers of the United States. 

The Arabian letter "jeem" or "jim, " which corresponds with our J, resembles some of the spectacular wonders seen by the delirium tremonsexpert. I do not know whether that is the reason the letter is called jeemor jim, or not. 

The letter "sheen" or "shin, " which is some like our "sh" in its effect, is a very pretty letter, and enough of them would make very attractivetrimming for pantalets or other clothing. The entire Arabic alphabet, Ithink, would work up first-rate into trimming for aprons, skirts, and soforth. 

Still it is not so rich in variety as the Chinese language. A Chinaman whodesires to publish a paper in order to fill a long felt want, must have asmall fortune in order to buy himself an alphabet. In this country we geta press, and then, if we have any money left, we lay it out in type; butin China the editor buys himself an alphabet and then regards the press asa mere annex. If you go to a Chinese type maker and ask him to show youhis goods, he will ask you whether you want a two or a three storyalphabet. 

The Chinese compositor spends most of his time riding up and down theelevator, seeking for letters and dusting them off with a feather duster. In large and wealthy offices the compositor sits at his case with the copybefore him, and has five or six boys running from one floor to another, bringing him the letters of this wild and peculiar alphabet. 

Sometimes they have to stop in the middle of a long editorial and senddown to Hong Kong and have a letter cast specially for that editorial. 

Chinese compositors soon die from heart disease, because they have to runup stairs and down so much in order to get the different letters needed. 

One large publisher tried to have his case arranged in a high buildingwithout floors, so that the compositor could reach each type by means of along pole, but one day there was a slight earthquake shock that spilledthe entire alphabet out of the case, all over the floor, and although thatwas ninety-seven years ago last April, there are still two bushels of pion the floor of that office. The paper employs rat printers, and as theyhave been engaged in assorting and distributing this mass of pi, it iscalled rat pi in China, and the term is quite popular. 

When the editor underscores a word, the Chinese compositor charges $9extra for italicizing it. This is nothing more than fair, for he may haveto go all over the empire, and climb twenty-seven flights of stairs tofind the necessary italics. So it is much more economical in China to usebody type mostly in setting up a paper, and the old journalist will avoidcaps and italics, unless he is very wealthy. 

Arabian literature is very rich, and more especially so in verse. How theArabian poets succeeded so well in writing their verse in their ownlanguage, I can hardly understand. I find it very difficult to writepoetry which will be greedily snapped up and paid for, even when writtenin the English language, but if I had to paw around for an hour to get abutton-hook for the end of the fourth line, so that it would rhyme withthe button-hook in the second line of the same verse, I believe it woulddrive me mad. 

The Arabian writer is very successful in a tale of fiction. He loves totake a tale and re-write it for the press by carefully expunging thefacts. It is in lyric and romantic writing that he seems to excel. 

The Arabian Nights is the most popular work that has survived the harshtouch of time. Its age is not fully known, and as the author has been deadseveral hundred years, I feel safe in saying that a number of theincidents contained in this book are grossly inaccurate. 

It has been translated several times with more or less success by variouswriters, and some of the statements contained in the book are well worthyof the advanced civilization, and wild word painting incident to a heatedpresidential campaign. 

Verona. 

We arrived in Verona day before yesterday. Most every one has heard of theTwo Gentlemen of Verona. This is the place they came from. They have neverreturned. Verona is not noted for its gentlemen now. Perhaps that is thereason I was regarded as such a curiosity when I came here. 

[Illustration: THE ODORS OF VERONA. ]

Verona is a good deal older town than Chicago, but the two cities havepoints of resemblance after all. When the southern simoon from the stockyards is wafted across the vinegar orchards of Chicago, and a load ofMormon emigrants get out at the Rock Island depot and begin to move aroundand squirm and emit the fragrance of crushed Limburger cheese, it remindsone of Verona. 

The sky is similar, too. At night, when it is raining hard, the sky ofChicago and Verona is not dissimilar. Chicago is the largest place, however, and my sympathies are with her. Verona has about 68, 000 peoplenow, aside from myself. This census includes foreigners and Indians nottaxed. 

Verona has an ancient skating rink, known in history as the amphitheatre, It is 404-1/2 feet by 516 in size, and the wall is still 100 feet high inplaces. The people of Verona wanted me to lecture there, but I refrained. I was afraid that some late comers might elbow their way in and leave oneend of the amphitheatre open and then there would be a draft. I will speakmore fully on the subject of amphitheatres in another letter. There isn'troom in this one. 

Verona is noted for the Capitular library, as it is called. This is saidto be the largest collection of rejected manuscripts in the world. I stoodin with the librarian and he gave me an opportunity to examine thiswonderful store of literary work. I found a Virgil that was certainly over1, 600 years old. I also found a well preserved copy of "Beautiful Snow. " Iread it. It was very touching indeed. Experts said it was 1, 700 years old, which is no doubt correct. I am no judge of the age of MSS. Some can lookat the teeth of a literary production and tell within two weeks how old itis, but I can't. You can also fool me on the age of wine. My rule used tobe to observe how old I felt the next day and to fix that as the age ofthe wine, but this rule I find is not infallible. One time I found myselffeeling the next day as though I might be 138 years old, but oninvestigation we found that the wine was extremely new, having been madeat a drug store in Cheyenne that same day. 

[Illustration: THE NEXT MORNING. ]

Looking these venerable MSS. Over, I noticed that the custom of writingwith a violet pencil on both sides of the large foolscap sheet, and thenfolding it in sixteen directions and carrying it around in the pocket fortwo or three centuries, is not a late American invention, as I had beenled to suppose. They did it in Italy fifteen centuries ago. I waspermitted also to examine the celebrated institutes of Gaius. Gaius was apoor penman, and I am convinced from a close examination of his work thathe was in the habit of carrying his manuscript around in his pocket withhis smoking tobacco. The guide said that was impossible, for smokingtobacco was not introduced into Italy until a comparatively late day. That's all right, however. You can't fool me much on the odor of smokingtobacco. 

The churches of Verona are numerous, and although they seem to me a littledifferent from our own in many ways, they resemble ours in others. Onething that pleased me about the churches of Verona was the total absenceof the church fair and festival as conducted in America. Salvation seemsto be handed out in Verona without ice cream and cake, and the odor ofsancity and stewed oysters do not go inevitably hand in hand. I havealready been in the place more than two days and I have not yet beeninvited to help lift the old church debt on the cathedral. Perhaps theythink I am not wealthy, however. In fact there is nothing about my dressor manner that would betray my wealth. I have been in Europe now six weeksand have kept my secret well. Even my most intimate traveling companionsdo not know that I am the Laramie City postmaster in disguise. 

The cathedral is a most imposing and massive pile. I quote this from theguide book. This beautiful structure contains a baptismal font cut out ofone solid block of stone and made for immersion, with an inside diameterof ten feet. A man nine feet high could be baptized there without injury. The Venetians have a great respect for water. They believe it ought not tobe used for anything else but to wash away sins, and even then they arevery economical about it. 

[Illustration]

There is a nice picture here by Titian. It looks as though it had beenleft in the smoke house 900 years and overlooked. Titian painted a greatdeal. You find his works here ever and anon. He must have had all he coulddo in Italy in an early day, when the country was new. I like his picturesfirst rate, but I haven't found one yet that I could secure at anythinglike a bed rock price. 

A Great Upheaval. 

I have just received the following letter, which I take the liberty ofpublishing, in order that good may come out of it, and that the publicgenerally may be on the watch:

William Nye, Esq. --

_Dear Sir:_ There has been a great religious upheaval here, and greatanxiety on the part of our entire congregation, and I write to you, hopingthat you may have some suggestions to offer that we could use at this timebeneficially. 

All the bitter and irreverent remarks of Bob Ingersoll have fallenharmlessly upon the minds of our people. The flippant sneers and wickedsarcasms of the modern infidel, wise in his own conceit, have alike passedover our heads without damage or disaster. These times that have triedmen's souls have only rooted us more firmly in the faith, and united usmore closely as brothers and sisters. 

We do not care whether the earth was made in two billion years or twominutes, so long as it was made and we are satisfied with it. We do notcare whether Jonah swallowed the whale or the whale swallowed Jonah. Noneof these things worry us in the least. We do not pin our faith on suchlittle matters as those, but we try to so live that when we pass on beyondthe flood we may have a record to which we may point with pride. 

But last Sabbath our entire congregation was visibly moved. People who hadgrown gray in this church got right up during the service and went out, and did not come in again. Brothers who had heard all kinds of infidelityand scorned to be moved by it, got up, and kicked the pews, and slammedthe doors, and created a young riot. 

For many years we have sailed along in the most peaceful faith, andthrough joy or sorrow we came to the church together to worship. We havelaughed and wept as one family for a quarter of a century, and an humbledignity and Christian style of etiquette have pervaded our incomings andour outgoings. 

That is the reason why a clear case of disorderly conduct in our churchhas attracted attention and newspaper comment. That is the reason why wewant in some public way to have the church set right before we suffer fromunjust criticism and worldly scorn. 

It has been reported that one of the brothers, who is sixty years of age, and a model Christian, and a good provider, rose during the first prayer, and, waving his plug hat in the air, gave a wild and blood-curdling whoop, jumped over the back of his pew, and lit out. While this is in a measuretrue, it is not accurate. He did do some wild and startling jumping, buthe did not jump over the pew. He tried to, but failed. He was too old. 

It has also been stated that another brother, who has done more to buildup the church and society here than any other one man of his size, threwhis hymn book across the church, and, with a loud wail that sounded likethe word "Gosh!" hissed through clenched teeth, got out through the windowand went away. This is overdrawn, though there is an element of truth init, and I do not try to deny it. 

There were other similar strong evidences of feeling throughout thecongregation, none of which had ever been noticed before in this place. Our clergyman was amazed and horrified. He tried to ignore the action ofthe brethren, but when a sister who has grown old in our church, and beensuch a model and example of rectitude that all the girls in the countywere perfectly discouraged about trying to be anywhere near equal to her;when she rose with a wild snort, got up on the pew with her feet, andswung her parasol in a way that indicated that she would not go home tillmorning, he paused and briefly wound up the services. 

Of course there were other little eccentricities on the part of thecongregation, but these were the ones that people have talked about themost, and have done us the most damage abroad. 

Now, my desire is that through the medium of the press you will state thatthis great trouble which has come upon us, by reason of which the ungodlyhave spoken lightly of us, was not the result of a general tendency todissent from the statements made by our pastor, and therefore anexhibition of our disapproval of his doctrines, but that the janitor hadstarted a light fire in the furnace, and that had revived a large nest ofcommon, streaked, hot-nosed wasps in the warm air pipe, and when they cameup through the register and united in the services, there was more or lessof an ovation. 

Sometimes Christianity gets sluggish and comatose, but not under the abovecircumstances. A man may slumber on softly with his bosom gently risingand falling, and his breath coming and going through one corner of hismouth like the death rattle of a bath-tub, while the pastor opens out anew box of theological thunders and fills the air full of the sullen roarof sulphurous waves, licking the shores of eternity and swallowing up thegreat multitudes of the eternally lost; but when one little wasp, with ared-hot revelation, goes gently up the leg of that same man's pantaloons, leaving large, hot tracks whenever he stopped and sat down to think itover, you will see a sudden awakening and a revival that will attractattention. 

I wish that you would take this letter, Mr. Nye, and write something fromit in your own way, for publication, showing how we happened to have morezeal than usual in the church last Sabbath, and that it was not directlythe result of the sermon which was preached on that day. 

Yours, with great respect, William Lemons. 

The Weeping Woman. 

I have not written much for publication lately, because I did not feelwell, I was fatigued. I took a ride on the cars last week and it shook meup a good deal. 

The train was crowded somewhat, and so I sat in a seat with a woman whogot aboard at Minkin's Siding. I noticed as we pulled out of Minkin'sSiding, that this woman raised the window so that she could bid adieu to aman in a dyed moustache. I do not know whether he was her dolce farniente, or her grandson by her second husband. I know that if he had beena relative of mine, however, I would have cheerfully concealed the fact. 

[Illustration: SHE SOBBED SEVERAL MORE TIMES. ]

She waved a little 2x6 handkerchief out of the window, said "good-bye, "allowed a fresh zephyr from Cape Sabine to come in and play a xylophoneinterlude on my spinal column, and then burst into a paroxysm of damp, hottears. 

I had to go into another car for a moment, and when I returned a pugilistfrom Chicago had my seat. When I travel I am uniformly courteous, especially to pugilists. A pugilist who has started out as an obscure boywith no money, no friends, and no one to practice on, except his wife orhis mother, with no capital aside from his bare hands; a man who has hadto fight his way through life, as it were, and yet who has come out ofobscurity and attracted the attention of the authorities, and won the goodwill of those with whom he came in contact, will always find me cordialand pacific. So I allowed this self-made man with the broad, high, intellectual shoulder blades, to sit in my seat with his feet on my newand expensive traveling bag, while I sat with the tear-bedewed mementofrom Minkin's Siding. 

She sobbed several more times, then hove a sigh that rattled the windowsin the car, and sat up. I asked her if I might sit by her side for a fewmiles and share her great sorrow. She looked at me askance. I did notresent it. She allowed me to take the seat, and I looked at a paper for afew moments so that she could look me over through the corners of hereyes. I also scrutinized her lineaments some. 

She was dressed up considerably, and, when a woman dresses up to ride in arailway train, she advertises the fact that her intellect is beginning tototter on its throne. People who have more than one suit of clothes shouldnot pick out the fine raiment for traveling purposes. This person was nothandsomely dressed, but she had the kind of clothes that look as thoughthey had tried to present the appearance of affluence and had failed to doso. 

This leads me to say, in all seriousness, that there is nothing so sad asthe sight of a man or woman who would scorn to tell a wrong story, but whowill persist in wearing bogus clothes and bogus jewelry that wouldn't foolanybody. 

My seat-mate wore a cloak that had started out to bamboozle the Americanpeople with the idea that it was worth $100, but it wouldn't misleadanyone who might be nearer than half a mile. I also discovered, that ithad an air about it that would indicate that she wore it while she cookedthe pancakes and fried the doughnuts. It hardly seems possible that shewould do this, but the garment, I say, had that air about it. 

She seemed to want to converse after awhile, and she began on the subjectof literature, picking up a volume that had been left in her seat by thetrain boy, entitled: "Shadowed to Skowhegan and Back; or, The Child Fiend;price $2, " we drifted on pleasantly into the broad domain of letters. 

Incidentally I asked her what authors she read mostly. 

"O, I don't remember the authors so much as I do the books, " said she; "Iam a great reader. If I should tell you how much I have read, you wouldn'tbelieve it. "

I said I certainly would. I had frequently been called upon to believethings that would make the ordinary rooster quail. 

If she discovered the true inwardness of this Anglo-American "Jewdesprit, "she refrained from saying anything about it. 

"I read a good deal, " she continued, "and it keeps me all strung up. Iweep, O so easily. " Just then she lightly laid her hand on my arm, and Icould see that the tears were rising to her eyes. I felt like asking herif she had ever tried running herself through a clothes wringer everymorning? I did feel that someone ought to chirk her up, so I asked her ifshe remembered the advice of the editor who received a letter from a younglady troubled the same way. She stated that she couldn't explain it, butevery little while, without any apparent cause, she would shed tears, andthe editor asked her why she didn't lock up the shed. 

We conversed for a long time about literature, but every little while shewould get me into deep water by quoting some author or work that I hadnever read. I never realized what a hopeless ignoramus I was till I heardabout the scores of books that had made her shed the scalding, and yetthat I had never, never read. When she looked at me with that far-awayexpression in her eyes, and with her hand resting lightly on my arm insuch a way as to give the gorgeous two karat Rhinestone from Pittsburgfull play, and told me how such works as "The New Made Grave; or The TwinMurderers" had cost her many and many a copious tear, I told her I wasglad of it. If it be a blessed boon for the student of such books to weepat home and work up their honest perspiration into scalding tears, far beit from me to grudge that poor boon. 

I hope that all who may read these lines, and who may feel that the poresof their skin are getting torpid and sluggish, owing to an inheritedantipathy toward physical exertion, and who feel that they would ratherwork up their perspiration into woe and shed it in the shape of commonred-eyed weep, will keep themselves to this poor boon. People havedifferent ways of enjoying themselves, and I hope no one will hesitateabout accepting this or any other poor boon that I do not happen to beusing at the time. 

The Crops. 

I have just been through Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, on a tour ofinspection. I rode for over ten days in these States in a sleeping-car, examining crops, so that I could write an intelligent report. 

[Illustration]

Grain in Northern Wisconsin suffered severely in the latter part of theseason from rust, chintz bug, Hessian fly and trichina. In the St. Croixvalley wheat will not average a half crop. I do not know why farmersshould insist upon leaving their grain out nights in July, when they knowfrom the experience of former years that it will surely rust. 

In Southern Wisconsin too much rain has almost destroyed many crops, andcattle have been unable to get enough to eat, unless they were fed, forseveral weeks. This is a sad outlook for the farmer at this season. 

In the northern part of the State many fields of grain were not worthcutting, while others barely yielded the seed, and even that of a veryinferior quality. 

The ruta-baga is looking unusually well this fall, but we cannot subsistentirely upon the ruta-baga. It is juicy and rich if eaten in largequantities, but it is too bulky to be popular with the aristocracy. 

Cabbages in most places are looking well, though in some quarters I noticean epidemic of worms. To successfully raise the cabbage, it will benecessary at all times to be well supplied with vermifuge that can bereadily administered at any hour of the day or night. 

The crook-neck squash in the Northwest is a great success this season. Andwhat can be more beautiful, as it calmly lies in its bower of green vinesin the crisp and golden haze of autumn, than the cute little crook-necksquash, with yellow, warty skin, all cuddled up together in the coolmorning, like the discarded wife of an old Mormon elder--his first attemptin the matrimonial line, so to speak, ere he had gained wisdom byexperience. 

The full-dress, low-neck-and-short-sleeve summer squash will be worn asusual this fall, with trimmings of salt and pepper in front and revers ofbutter down the back. 

N. B. --It will not be used much as an outside wrap, but will be worn mostlyinside. 

Hop-poles in some parts of Wisconsin are entirely killed. I suppose thatcontinued dry weather in the early summer did it. 

Hop-lice, however, are looking well. Many of our best hop-breeders thoughtthat when the hop-pole began to wither and die, the hop-louse could notsurvive the intense dry heat; but hop-lice have never looked better inthis State than they do this fall. 

I can remember very well when Wisconsin had to send to Ohio for hop-lice. Now she could almost supply Ohio and still have enough to fill her owncoffers. 

[Illustration: ENJOYING HIMSELF AT THE DANCE. ]

I do not know that hop-lice are kept in coffers, and I may be wrong inspeaking thus freely of these two subjects, never having seen either ahop-louse or a coffer, but I feel that the public must certainly andnaturally expect me to say something on these subjects. Fruit in theNorthwest this season is not a great success. Aside from the cranberry andchoke-cherry, the fruit yield in the northern district is light. The earlydwarf crab, with or without, worms, as desired--but mostly with--isunusually poor this fall. They make good cider. This cider when put into abrandy flask that has not been drained too dry, and allowed to stand untilChristmas, puts a great deal of expression into a country dance. I havetried it once myself, so that I could write it up for your valuable paper. 

People who were present at that dance, and who saw me frolic around therelike a thing of life, say that it was well worth the price of admission. Stone fence always flies right to the weakest spot. So it goes right to myhead and makes me eccentric. 

The violin virtuoso who "fiddled, " "called off" and acted as justice ofthe peace that evening, said that I threw aside all reserve and enteredwith great zest into the dance, and seemed to enjoy it much better thanthose who danced in the same set with me. Since that, the very sight of acommon crab apple makes my head reel. I learned afterward that this ciderhad frozen, so that the alleged cider which we drank that night was theclear, old-fashioned brandy, which of course would not freeze. 

We should strive, however, to lead such lives that we will never beashamed to look a cider barrel square in the bung. 

[Illustration]

Literary Freaks. 

People who write for a livelihood get some queer propositions from thosewho have crude ideas about the operation of the literary machine. There isa prevailing idea among those who have never dabbled in literature verymuch, that the divine afflatus works a good deal like a corn sheller. Thisis erroneous. 

To put a bushel of words into the hopper and have them come out a poem ora sermon, is a more complicated process than it would seem to the casualobserver. 

I can hardly be called literary, though I admit that my tastes lie in thatdirection, and yet I have had some singular experiences in that line. Forinstance, last year I received flattering overtures from three young menwho wanted me to write speeches for them to deliver on the Fourth of July. They could do it themselves, but hadn't the time. If I would write thespeeches they would be willing to revise them. They seemed to think itwould be a good idea to write the speeches a little longer than necessaryand then the poorer parts of the effort could be cut out. Various priceswere set on these efforts, from a dollar to "the kindest regards. " Peoplewho have squeezed through one of our adult winters in this latitude, subsisting on kind regards, will please communicate with the writer, stating how they like it. 

One gentleman, who was in the confectionery business, wanted a lot of"humorous notices wrote for to put into conversation candy. " It was a bigtemptation to write something that would be in every lady's mouth, but Irefrained. Writing gum drop epitaphs may properly belong to the domain ofliterature, but I doubt it. Surely I do not want to be haughty and abovemy business, but it seems to me that this is irrelevant. 

Another man wanted me to write a "piece for his boy to speak, " and if Iwould do so, I could come to his house some Saturday night and stay overSunday. He said that the boy was "a perfect little case to carry on andfolks didn't know whether he would develop into a condemb fool or ayoumerist. " So he wanted a piece of one of them tomfoolery kind for thelittle cuss to speak the last day of school. 

[Illustration: HIS MOTTO. ]

A coal dealer who had risen to affluence by selling coal to the poor byapothecaries' weight, wrote to ask me for a design to be used as a familycrest and a motto to emblazon on his arms. I told him I had run out ofcrests, but that "weight for the wagon, we'll all take a ride, " would be agood motto; or he might use the following: "The fuel and his money aresoon parted. " He might emblazon this on his arms, or tattoo it on anyother part of his system where he thought it would be becoming to hiscomplexion. I never heard from him again, and I do not know whether he wasoffended or not. 

Two young men in Massachusetts wrote me a letter in which they said they"had a good thing on mother. " They wanted it written up in a facetiousvein. They said that their father had been on the coast a few weeksbefore, engaged in the eeling industry. Being a good man, but partiallyfull, he had mingled himself in the flowing tide and got drowned. Finally, after several days' search, the neighbors came in sadly and told the oldlady thai they had found all that was mortal of James, and there were twoeels in the remains. They asked for further instructions as to deceased. The old lady swabbed out her weeping eyes, braced herself against the sinkand told the men to "bring in the eels and set him again. "

The boys thought that if this could be properly written up, "it would be amighty good joke on mother. " I was greatly shocked when I received thisletter. It seemed to me heartless for young men to speak lightly of theirwidowed mother's great woe. I wrote them how I felt about it, and rebukedthem severely for treating their mother's grief so lightly. Also fortrying to impose upon me with an old chestnut. 

A Father's Advice to His Son. 

My dear Henry. --Your pensive favor of the 20th inst. , asking for moremeans with which to persecute your studies, and also a young man fromOhio, is at hand and carefully noted. 

I would not be ashamed to have you show the foregoing sentence to yourteacher, if it could be worked, in a quiet way, so as not to lookegotistic on my part. I think myself that it is pretty fair for a man thatnever had any advantages. 

But, Henry, why will you insist on fighting the young man from Ohio? It isnot only rude and wrong, but you invariably get licked. There's where theenormity of the thing comes in. 

It was this young man from Ohio, named Williams, that you hazed last year, or at least that's what I gether from a letter sent me by your warden. Hemaintains that you started in to mix Mr. Williams up with the campus insome way, and that in some way Mr. Williams resented it and got his fangstangled up in the bridge of your nose. 

You never wrote this to me or to your mother, but I know how busy you arewith your studies, and I hope you won't ever neglect your books just towrite to us. 

Your warden, or whoever he is, said that Mr. Williams also hung ahand-painted marine view over your eye and put an extra eyelid on one ofyour ears. 

I wish that, if you get time, you would write us about it, because, ifthere's anything I can do for you in the arnica line, I would be pleasedto do so. 

The president also says that in the scuffle you and Mr. Williams swappedbelts as follows, to-wit: That Williams snatched off the belt of yourlittle Norfolk jacket, and then gave you one in the eye. 

From this I gether that the old prez, as you faseshusly call him, is anyoumorist. He is not a very good penman, however; though, so far, hiswords have all been spelled correct. 

I would hate to see you permanently injured, Henry, but I hope that whenyou try to tramp on the toes of a good boy simply because you are aseanyour and he is a fresh, as you frequently state, that he will ariseand rip your little pleated jacket up the back and make your spinal colyumlook like a corderoy bridge in the spring tra la. (This is from a Japanshow I was to last week. )

Why should a seanyour in a colledge tromp onto the young chaps that comein there to learn? Have you forgot how I fatted up the old cow and beefedher so that you could go and monkey with youclid and algebray? Have youforgot how the other boys pulled you through a mill pond and made youtobogin down hill in a salt barrel with brads in it? Do you remember howyour mother went down there to nuss you for two weeks and I stayed tohome, and done my own work and the housework too and cooked my own vittlesfor the whole two weeks?

And now, Henry, you call yourself a seanyour, and therefore, because youare simply older in crime, you want to muss up Mr. Williams's features sothat his mother will have to come over and nuss him. I am glad that yourlittle pleated coat is ripped up the back, Henry, under the circumstances, and I am also glad that you are wearing the belt--over your off eye. Ifthere's anything I can do to add to the hilarity of the occasion, pleaselet me know and I will tend to it. 

The lop-horned heifer is a parent once more, and I am trying in my poor, weak way to learn her wayward offspring how to drink out of a patent pailwithout pushing your old father over into the hay-mow. He is a cute littlequadruped, with a wild desire to have fun at my expense. He loves toswaller a part of my coat-tail Sunday morning, when I am dressed up, andthen return it to me in a moist condition. He seems to know that when Iaddress the sabbath school the children will see the joke and enjoy it. 

Your mother is about the same, trying in her meek way to adjust herself toa new set of teeth that are a size too large for her. She has one largebunion in the roof of her mouth already, but is still resolved to hold outfaithful, and hopes these few lines will find you enjoying the same greatblessing. 

You will find inclosed a dark-blue money-order for four eighty-five. It ismoney that I had set aside to pay my taxes, but there is no novelty aboutpaying taxes. I've done that before, so it don't thrill me as it used to. 

Give my congratulations to Mr. Williams. He has got the elements ofgreatness to a wonderful degree. If I happened to be participating in thatcolledge of yours, I would gently but firmly decline to be tromped onto. 

So good-bye for this time. 

Your Father. 

Eccentricity in Lunch. 

Over at Kasota Junction, the other day, I found a living curiosity. He wasa man of about medium height, perhaps 45 years of age, of a quietdisposition, and not noticeable or peculiar in his general manner. He runsthe railroad eating-house at that point, and the one odd characteristicwhich he has, makes him well known all through three or four States. Icould not illustrate his eccentricity any better than by relating acircumstance that occurred to me at the Junction last week. I had justeaten breakfast there and paid for it. I stepped up to the cigar case andasked this man if he had "a rattling good cigar. "

[Illustration: THE ANTIQUE LUNCH. ]

Without knowing it I had struck the very point upon which this man seemsto be a crank, if you will allow me that expression, though it doesn't fitvery well in this place. He looked at me in a sad and subdued manner andsaid, "No, sir; I haven't a rattling good cigar in the house. I have somecigars there that I bought for Havana fillers, but they are mostly filledwith pieces of Colorado Maduro overalls. There's a box over yonder that Ibought for good, straight ten cent cigars, but they are only a chaos ofhay and Flora, Fino and Damfino, all socked into a Wisconsin wrapper. Overin the other end of the case is a brand of cigars that were to knock thetar out of all other kinds of weeds, according to the urbane rustler whosold them to me, and then drew on me before I could light one of them. Well, instead of being a fine Colorado Claro with a high-priced wrapper, they are common Mexicano stinkaros in a Mother Hubbard wrapper. Thecommercial tourist who sold me those cigars and then drew on me at sightwas a good deal better on the draw than his cigars are. If you willnotice, you will see that each cigar has a spinal column to it, and thisouter debris is wrapped around it. One man bought a cigar out of that boxlast week. I told him, though, just as I am telling you, that they were nogood, and if he bought one he would regret it. But he took one and wentout on the veranda to smoke it. Then he stepped on a melon rind and fellwith great force on his side. When we picked him up he gasped once ortwice and expired. We opened his vest hurriedly and found that, infalling, this bouquet de Gluefactoro cigar, with the spinal column, hadbeen driven through his breast bone and had penetrated his heart. Thewrapper of the cigar never so much as cracked. "

"But doesn't it impair your trade to run on in this wild, reckless wayabout your cigars?"

"It may at first, but not after awhile. I always tell people what mycigars are made of, and then they can't blame me; so, after awhile theyget to believe what I say about them. I often wonder that no cigar manever tried this way before. I do just the same way about my lunch counter. If a man steps up and wants a fresh ham sandwich I give it to him if I'vegot it, and if I haven't it I tell him so. If you turn my sandwiches over, you will find the date of its publication on every one. If they are notfresh, and I have no fresh ones, I tell the customer that they are not soblamed fresh as the young man with the gauze moustache, but that I canremember very well when they were fresh, and if his artificial teeth fithim pretty well he can try one. 

"It's just the same with boiled eggs. I have a rubber dating stamp, and assoon as the eggs are turned over to me by the hen for inspection, I datethem. Then they are boiled and another date in red is stamped on them. Ifone of my clerks should date an egg ahead, I would fire him too quick. 

"On this account, people who know me will skip a meal at MissouriJunction, in order to come here and eat things that are not clouded withmystery. I do not keep any poor stuff when I can help it, but if I do, Idon't conceal the horrible fact. 

"Of course a new cook will sometimes smuggle a late date onto a mediaevalegg and sell it, but he has to change his name and flee. 

"I suppose that if every eating-house should date everything, and besquare with the public, it would be an old story and wouldn't pay; but asit is, no one trying to compete with me, I do well out of it, and peoplecome here out of curiosity a good deal. 

"The reason I try to do right and win the public esteem is that thegeneral public never did me any harm and the majority of people who travelare a kind that I may meet in a future state. I should hate to have athousand traveling men holding nuggets of rancid ham sandwiches under mynose through all eternity, and know that I had lied about it. It's anhonest fact, if I knew I'd got to stand up and apologize for my hand-made, all-around, seamless pies, and quarantine cigars, Heaven would be noobject. "

Insomnia in Domestic Animals. 

If there be one thing above another that I revel in, it is science. I havedevoted much of my life to scientific research, and though it hasn't mademuch stir in the scientific world so far, I am positive that when I amgone the scientists of our day will miss me, and the red-nosed theoristwill come and shed the scalding tear over my humble tomb. 

My attention was first attracted to insomnia as the foe of the domesticanimal, by the strange appearance of a favorite dog named Lucretia Borgia. I did not name this animal Lucretia Borgia. He was named when I purchasedhim. In his eccentric and abnormal thirst for blood he favored Lucretia, but in sex he did not. I got him partly because he loved children. Theowner said Lucretia Borgia was an ardent lover of children, and I foundthat he was. He seemed to love them best in the spring of the year, whenthey were tender. He would have eaten up a favorite child of mine, if theyoungster hadn't left a rubber ball in his pocket which clogged theglottis of Lucretia till I could get there and disengage what was left ofthe child. 

Lucretia soon after this began to be restless. He would come to mycasement and lift up his voice, and howl into the bosom of the silentnight. At first I thought that he had found some one in distress, orwanted to get me out of doors and save my life. I went out several nightsin a weird costume that I had made up of garments belonging to differentmembers of my family. I dressed carefully in the dark and stole out tokill the assassin referred to by Lucretia, but he was not there. Then thefaithful animal would run up to me and with almost human, pleading eyes, bark and run away toward a distant alley. I immediately decided that someone was suffering there. I had read in books about dogs that led theirmasters away to the suffering and saved people's lives; so, when Lucretiacame to me with his great, honest eyes and took little mementoes out ofthe calf of my leg, and then galloped off seven or eight blocks, Ifollowed him in the chill air of night and my Mosaic clothes. I wanderedaway to where the dog stopped behind a livery stable, and there, lying ina shuddering heap on the frosty ground, lay the still, white features of asoup bone that had outlived its usefulness. 

On the way back, I met a physician who had been up town to swear in anAmerican citizen who would vote twenty-one years later, if he lived. Thephysician stopped me and was going to take me to the home of thefriendless, when he discovered who I was. 

[Illustration: EXCITING PUBLIC CURIOSITY. ]

You wrap a tall man, with a William H. Seward nose, in a flannel robe, cutplain, and then put a plug hat and a sealskin sacque and Arctic overshoeson him, and put him out in the street, under the gaslight, with his trim, purple ankles just revealing themselves as he madly gallops after ahydrophobia infested dog, and it is not, after all, surprising thatpeople's curiosity should be a little bit excited. 

After I had introduced myself to the physician and asked him for a cigar, explaining that I could not find any in the clothes I had on, I asked himabout Lucretia Borgia. I told the doctor how Lucretia seemed restlessnights and nervous and irritable days, and how he seemed to be almost amental wreck, and asked him what the trouble was. 

He said it was undoubtedly "insomnia. " He said that it was a bad case ofit, too. I told him I thought so myself. I said I didn't mind the insomniathat Lucretia had so much as I did my own. I was getting more insomnia onmy hands than I could use. 

He gave me something to administer to Lucretia. He said I must put it in alink of sausage and leave the sausage where it would appear that I didn'twant the dog to get it, and then Lucretia would eat it greedily. 

I did so. It worked well so far as the administration of the remedy wasconcerned, but it was fatal to my little, high strung, yearnful dog. Itmust have contained something of a deleterious character, for the nextmorning a coarse man took Lucretia Borgia by the tail and laid him wherethe violets blow. Malignant insomnia is fast becoming the great foe to themodern American dog. 

Along Lake Superior. 

I have just returned from a brief visit to Duluth. After strolling alongthe Bay of Naples and watching old Vesuvius vomit red-hot mud, vapor andother campaign documents, Duluth is quite a change. The ice in the bay atDuluth was thirty-eight inches in depth when I left there the last week inMarch, and we rode across it with the utmost impunity. By the time theselines fall beneath the eye of the genial, courteous and urbane reader, thenew railroad bridge across the bay, over a mile and a half long, will havebeen completed, so that you may ride from Chicago to Duluth over theNorthwestern and Omaha railroads with great comfort. I would be glad todigress here and tell about the beauty of the summer scenery along theOmaha road, and the shy and beautiful troutlet, and the dark and silentChippewa squawlet and her little bleached out pappooselet, were it not forthe unkind and cruel thrusts that I would invoke from the scenery cynicwho believes that a newspaper man's opinions may be largely warped with apass. 

Duluth has been joked a good deal, but she stands it first-rate and takesit good naturedly. She claims 16, 000 people, some of whom I met at theopera house there. If the rest of the 16, 000 are as pleasant as those Iconversed with that evening, Duluth must be a pleasant place to live in. Duluth has a very pleasant and beautiful opera house that seats 1, 000people. A few more could have elbowed their way into the opera house theevening that I spoke there, but they preferred to suffer on at home. 

Lake Superior is one of the largest aggregations of fresh wetness in theworld, if not the largest. When I stop to think that some day all thiscold, cold water will have to be absorbed by mankind, it gives me a crampin the geographical center. 

Around the west end of Lake Superior there is a string of towns whichstretches along the shore for miles under one name or another, all waitingfor the boom to strike and make the northern Chicago. You cannot visitDuluth or Superior without feeling that at any moment the tide of tradewill rise and designate the point where the future metropolis of thenorthern lakes is to be. I firmly believe that this summer will decide it, and my guess is that what is now known as West Superior is to get thebenefit. For many years destiny has been hovering over the west end ofthis mighty lake, and now the favored point is going to be designated. Duluth has past prosperity and expensive improvements in her favor, and infact the whole locality is going to be benefited, but if I had a block inWest Superior with a roller rink on it, I would wear my best clothes everyday and claim to be a millionaire in disguise. Ex-President R. B. Hayeshas a large brick block in Duluth, but he does not occupy it. Those who goto Duluth hoping to meet Mr. Hayes will be bitterly disappointed. 

The streams that run into Lake Superior are alive with trout, and nextsummer I propose to go up there and roast until I have so thoroughlysaturated my system with trout that the trout bones will stick out throughmy clothes in every direction and people will regard me as a beautifultoothpick holder. 

Still there will be a few left for those who think of going up there. AllI will need will be barely enough to feed Albert Victor and myself fromday to day. People who have never seen a crowned head with a peeled noseon it are cordially invited to come over and see us during office hours. Albert is not at all haughty, and I intend to throw aside my usual reservethis summer also--for the time. P. Wales' son and I will be far from thecares that crowd so thick and fast on greatness. People who come to ourcedar bark wigwam to show us their mosquito bites, will be received ascordially as though no great social chasm yawned between us. 

Many will meet us in the depths of the forest and go away thinking that weare just common plugs of whom the world wots not; but there is where theywill fool themselves. 

Then, when the season is over, we will come back into the great maelstromof life, he to wait for his grandmother's overshoes and I to thrillwaiting millions from the rostrum with my "Tale of the Broncho Cow. " Andso it goes with us all. Adown life's rugged pathway some must toil on fromdaylight to dark to earn their meagre pittance as kings, while others areborn to wear a swallow-tail coat every evening and wring tears of genuineanguish from their audiences. 

They tell some rather wide stories about people who have gone up theretotal physical wrecks and returned strong and well. One man said that heknew a young college student, who was all run down and weak, go up thereon the Brule and eat trout and fight mosquitoes a few months, and when hereturned to his Boston home he was so stout and well and tanned up thathis parents did not know him. There was a man in our car who weighed 300pounds. He seemed to be boiling out through his clothes everywhere. He wasthe happiest looking man I ever saw. All he seemed to do in this life wasto sit all day and whistle and laugh and trot his stomach, first on oneknee and then on the other. 

He said that he went up into the pine forests of the Great Lake region abroken-down hypochondriac and confirmed consumptive. He had been measuredfor a funeral sermon three times, he said, and had never used either ofthem. He knew a clergyman named Brayley who went up into that region withBright's justly celebrated disease. He was so emaciated that he couldn'tcarry a watch. The ticking of the watch rattled his bones so that it madehim nervous, and at night they had to pack him in cotton so that hewouldn't break a leg when he turned over. He got to sleeping out nights ona bed of balsam and spruce boughs and eating venison and trout. 

When he came down in the spring, he passed through a car of lumbermen andone of them put a warm, wet quid of tobacco in his plug hat for a joke. There were a hundred of these lumbermen when the preacher began, and whenthe train got into Eau Claire there were only three of them well enough togo around to the office and draw their pay. 

This is just as the story was given to me and I repeat it to show howbracing the climate near Superior is. Remember, if you please, that I donot want the story to be repeated as coming from me, for I have nothingleft now but my reputation for veracity, and that has had a very hardwinter of it. 

I Tried Milling. 

I think I was about 18 years of age when I decided that I would be amiller, with flour on my clothes and a salary of $200 per month. This wasnot the first thing I had decided to be, and afterward changed my mindabout. 

I engaged to learn my profession of a man called Sam Newton, I believe; atleast I will call him that for the sake of argument. My business was toweigh wheat, deduct as much as possible on account of cockle, pigeon grassand wild buckwheat, and to chisel the honest farmer out of all he wouldstand. This was the programme with Mr. Newton; but I am happy to say thatit met with its reward, and the sheriff afterward operated the mill. 

On stormy days I did the book-keeping, with a scoop shovel behind my ear, in a pile of middlings on the fifth floor. Gradually I drifted into doinga good deal of this kind of brain work. I would chop the ice out of theturbine wheel at 5 o'clock A. M. , and then frolic up six flights of stairsand shovel shorts till 9 o'clock P. M. 

By shoveling bran and other vegetables 16 hours a day, a general knowledgeof the milling business may be readily obtained. I used to scoop middlingstill I could see stars, and then I would look out at the landscape andponder. 

I got so that I piled up more ponder, after a while, than I did middlings. 

One day the proprietor came up stairs and discovered me in a brown study, whereupon he cursed me in a subdued Presbyterian way, abbreviated mysalary from $26 per month to $18 and reduced me to the ranks. 

Afterward I got together enough desultory information so that I couldsuperintend the feed stone. The feed stone is used to grind hen feed andother luxuries. One day I noticed an odor that reminded me of a hotovershoe trying to smother a glue factory at the close of a tropical day. I spoke to the chief floor walker of the mill about it, and he said "dodgammit" or something that sounded like that, in a course and brutalmanner. He then kicked my person in a rude and hurried tone of voice, andtold me that the feed stone was burning up. 

He was a very fierce man, with a violent and ungovernable temper, and, finding that I was only increasing his brutal fury, I afterward resignedmy position. I talked it over with the proprietor, and both agreed that itwould be best. He agreed to it before I did, and rather hurried up mydetermination to go. 

[Illustration: HE MADE IT AN OBJECT FOR ME TO GO. ]

I rather hated to go so soon, but he made it an object for me to go, and Iwent. I started in with the idea that I would begin at the bottom of theladder, as it were, and gradually climb to the bran bin by my ownexertions, hoping by honesty, industry, and carrying two bushels of wheatup nine flights of stairs, to become a wealthy man, with corn meal in myhair and cracked wheat in my coat pocket, but I did not seem to accomplishit. 

Instead of having ink on my fingers and a chastened look of woe on myclear-cut Grecian features, I might have poured No. 1 hard wheat andbuckwheat flour out of my long taper ears every night, if I had stuck tothe profession. Still, as I say, it was for another man's best good that Iresigned. The head miller had no control over himself and the proprietorhad rather set his heart on my resignation, so it was better that way. 

Still I like to roll around in the bran pile, and monkey in the crackedwheat. I love also to go out in the kitchen and put corn meal down theback of the cook's neck while my wife is working a purple silk Kensingtondog, with navy blue mane and tail, on a gothic lambrequin. 

I can never cease to hanker for the rumble and grumble of the busy mill, and the solemn murmur of the millstones and the machinery are music to me. More so than the solemn murmur of the proprietor used to be when he camein at an inopportune moment, and in that impromptu and extemporaneousmanner of his, and found me admiring the wild and beautiful scenery. Hemay have been a good miller, but he had no love for the beautiful. Perhapsthat is why he was always so cold and cruel toward me. My slender, willowygrace and mellow, bird-like voice never seemed to melt his stony heart. 

Our Forefathers. 

Seattle, W. T. , December 12. --I am up here on the Sound in two senses. Irode down to-day from Tacoma on the Sound, and to-night I shall lecture atFrye's Opera House. 

Seattle is a good town. The name lacks poetic warmth, but some day the manwho has invested in Seattle real estate will have reason to pat himself onthe back and say "ha ha, " or words to that effect. The city is situated onthe side of a large hill and commands a very fine view of that world'smost calm and beautiful collection of water, Puget Sound. 

I cannot speak too highly of any sheet of water on which I can ride allday with no compunction of digestion. He who has tossed for days upon thebriny deep, will understand this and appreciate it; even if he nevertossed upon the angry deep, if it happened to be all he had, he will beglad to know that the Sound is a good piece of water to ride on. Thegentle reader who has crossed the raging main and borrowed high-pricedmeals of the steamship company for days and days, will agree with me thatwhen we can find a smooth piece of water to ride on we should lose no timein crossing it. 

In Washington Territory the women vote. That is no novelty to me, ofcourse, for I lived in Wyoming for seven years where women vote, and Iheld office all the time. And still they say that female voters are poorjudges of men, and that any pleasing $2 adonis who comes along and asksfor their suffrages will get them. 

Not much!!!

Woman is a keen and correct judge of mental and moral worth. Withoutstopping to give logical reasons for her course, perhaps, she stillchooses with unerring judgment at the polls. 

Anyone who doubts this statement, will do well to go to the old poll booksin Wyoming and examine my overwhelming majorities--with a powerfulmagnifier. 

I have just received from Boston a warm invitation to be present in thatcity on Forefathers' day, to take part in the ceremonies and join in thefestivities of that occasion. 

Forefathers, I thank you! Though this reply will not reach you for a longtime, perhaps, I desire to express to you my deep appreciation of yourkindness, and, though I can hardly be regarded as a forefather myself, Iassure you that I sympathize with you. 

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be with you on this day ofyour general jubilee and to talk over old times with you. 

One who has never experienced the thrill of genuine joy that wakens a manto a glad realization of the fact that he is a forefather, cannotunderstand its full significance. You alone know how it is yourself, youcan speak from experience. 

In fancy's dim corridors I see you stand, away back in the early dawn ofour national day, with the tallow candle drooping and dying in its socket, as you waited for the physician to come and announce to you that you werea forefather. 

Forefathers; you have done well. Others have sought to outdo you and wrestthe laurels from your brow, but they did not succeed. As forefathers youhave never been successfully scooped. 

I hope that you will keep up your justly celebrated organization. If aforefather allows his dues to get in arrears, go to him kindly and ask himlike a brother to put up. If he refuses to do so, fire him. There is noreason why a man should presume upon his long standing as a forefather tobecome insolent to other forefathers who are far his seniors. As a rule, Inotice it is the young amateur forefather who has only been so a few days, in fact, who is arrogant and disobedient. 

I have often wished that we could observe Forefathers' day more generallyin the West. Why we should allow the Eastern cities to outdo us in thismatter while we hold over them in other ways, I cannot understand. Ourchurch sociables and homicides in the West will compare favorably withthose of the effeter cities of the Atlantic slope. Our educationalinstitutions and embezzlers are making rapid strides, especially ourembezzlers. We are cultivating a certain air of refinement and haughtyreserve which enables us at times to fool the best judges. Many of ourWestern people have been to the Atlantic seaboard and remained all summerwithout falling into the hands of the bunko artist. A cow gentleman friendof mine who bathed his plump limbs in the Atlantic last summer during theday, and mixed himself up in the mazy dance at night, told me on hisreturn that he had enjoyed the summer immensely, but that he had returnedfinancially depressed. 

"Ah, " said I, with an air of superiority which I often assume whiletalking to men who know more than I do, "you fell into the hands of thecultivated confidence man?"

"No, William, " he said sadly, "worse than that. I stopped at a seasidehotel. Had I gone to New York City and hunted up the gentlemanly bunko manand the Wall street dealer in lamb's pelts, as my better judgmentprompted, I might have returned with funds. Now I am almost insolvent. Ibegin life again with great sorrow, and the same old Texas steer withwhich I went into the cattle industry five years ago. "

But why should we, here in the West, take readily to all otherinstitutions common to the cultured East and ignore the forefatherindustry? I now make this public announcement, and will stick to it, viz:I will be one of ten full-blooded American citizens to establish a branchforefather's lodge in the West, with a separate fund set aside for thebenefit of forefathers who are no longer young. Forefathers are just asapt to become old and helpless as anyone else. Young men who contemplatebecoming forefathers should remember this. 

In Acknowledgement. 

To The Metropolitan Guide Publishing Co. , New York. 

Gentlemen. --I received the copy of your justly celebrated "Guide to rapidAffluence, or How to Acquire Wealth Without Mental Exertion, " pricetwenty-five cents. It is a great boon. 

I have now had this book sixteen weeks, and, as I am wealthy enough, Ireturn it. It is not much worn, and if you will allow me fifteen cents forit, I would be very grateful. It is not the intrinsic value of the fifteencents that I care for so much, but I would like it as a curiosity. 

The book is wonderfully graphic and thorough in all its details, and I wasespecially pleased with its careful and useful recipe for ointments. Onestyle of ointment spoken of and recommended by your valuable book, isworthy of a place in history. I made some of it according to your formula. I tried it on a friend of mine. He wore it when he went away, and he hasnot as yet returned. I heard, incidentally, that it adhered to him. Peoplewho have examined it say that it retains its position on his personsimilar to a birthmark. 

Your cement does not have the same peculiarity. It does everything butadhere. Among other specialties it effects a singular odor. It has afragrance that ought to be utilized in some way. Men have harnessed thelightning, and it seems to me that the day is not far distant when a manwill be raised up who can control this latent power. Do you not think thatpossibly you have made a mistake and got your ointment and cement formulamixed? Your cement certainly smells like a corrupt administration in awarm room. 

Your revelations in the liquor manufacture, and how to make any mixeddrink with one hand tied, is well worth the price of the book. The chapteron bar etiquette is also excellent. Very few men know how to properlyenter a bar-room and what to do after they arrive. How to get into abar-room without attracting attention, and how to get out without policeinterference, are points upon which our American drunkards are lamentablyignorant. How to properly address a bar tender, is also a page that nostudent of good breeding could well omit. 

I was greatly surprised to read how simple the manufacture of drinks underyour formula is. You construct a cocktail without liquor and then robintemperance of its sting. You also make all kinds of liquor without theuse of alcohol, that demon under whose iron heel thousands of our sons andbrothers go down to death and delirium annually. Thus you are doing a goodwork. 

You also unite aloes, tobacco and Rough on Rats, and, by a happycombination, construct a style of beer that is non-intoxicating. 

No one could, by any possible means, become intoxicated on your justlycelebrated beer. He would not have time. Before he could get inebriated hewould be in the New Jerusalem. 

Those who drink your beer will not fill drunkards' graves. They will closetheir career and march out of this life with perforated stomachs and alook of intense anguish. 

Your method of making cider without apples is also frugal andingenious. Thousands of innocent apple worms annually lose their livesin the manufacture of cider. They are also, in most instances, whollyunprepared to die. By your method, a style of wormless cider isconstructed that would not fool anyone. It tastes a good deal likerain water that was rained about the first time that any raining wasever done, and was deprived of air ever since. 

[Illustration: HOW TO WIN AFFECTION. ]

The closing chapter on the subject of "How to win the affections of theopposite sex at sixty yards, " is first-rate. It is wonderful what triumphscience and inventions have wrenched from obdurate conditions! Only a fewyears ago, a young man had to work hard for weeks and months in order towin the love of a noble young woman. Now, with your valuable and scholarlywork, price twenty-five cents, he studies over the closing chapter an houror two, then goes out into society and gathers in his victim. And yet I donot grudge the long, long hours I squandered in those years when peoplewere in heathenish darkness. I had no book like yours to tell me how towin the affections of the opposite sex. I could only blunder on, weekafter week and yet I do not regret it. It was just the school I needed. Itdid me good. 

Your book will, no doubt, be a good thing for those who now grope, but Ihave groped so long that I have formed the habit and prefer it. Let me goright on groping. Those who desire to win the affections of the oppositesex at one sitting, will do well to send two bits for your great work, butI am in no hurry. My time is not valuable. 

Preventing a Scandal. 

Boys should never be afraid or ashamed to do little odd jobs by which toacquire money. Too many boys are afraid, or at least seem to beembarrassed when asked to do chores, and thus earn small sums of money. Inorder to appreciate wealth we must earn it ourselves. That is the reason Ilabor. I do not need to labor. My parents are still living, and theycertainly would not see me suffer for the necessities of life. But life inthat way would not have the keen relish that it would if I earned themoney myself. 

Sawing wood used to be a favorite pastime with boys twenty years ago. Iremember the first money I ever earned was by sawing wood. My brother andmyself were to receive $5 for sawing five cords of wood. We allowed thejob to stand, however, until the weather got quite warm, and then wedecided to hire a foreigner who came along that way one glorious summerday when all nature seemed tickled and we knew that the fish would be aptto bite. So we hired the foreigner, and while he sawed, we would bet withhim on various "dead sure things" until he got the wood sawed, when hewent away owing us fifty cents. 

We had a neighbor who was very wealthy. He noticed that we boys earned ourown spending money, and he yearned to have his son try to ditto. So hetold the boy that he was going away for a few weeks and that he would givehim $2 per cord, or double price, to saw the wood. He wanted to teach theboy to earn and appreciate his money. So, when the old man went away, theboy secured a colored man to do the job at $1 per cord, by which processthe youth made $10. This he judiciously invested in clothes, meeting hisfather at the train in a new summer suit and a speckled cane. The old mansaid he could see by the sparkle in the boy's clear, honest eyes, thathealthful exercise was what boys needed. 

When I was a boy I frequently acquired large sums of money by carryingcoal up two flights of stairs for wealthy people who were too fat to do itthemselves. This money I invested from time to time in side shows andother zoological attractions. 

One day I saw a coal cart back up and unload itself on the walk in such away as to indicate that the coal would have to be manually elevated insidethe building. I waited till I nearly froze to death, for the owner to comealong and solicit my aid. Finally he came. He smelled strong of carbolicacid, and I afterward learned that he was a physician and surgeon. 

We haggled over the price for some time, as I had to carry the coal up twoflights in an old waste paper basket and it was quite a task. Finally weagreed. I proceeded with the work. About dusk I went up the last flight ofstairs with the last load. My feet seemed to weigh about nineteen poundsapiece and my face was very sombre. 

In the gloaming I saw my employer. He was writing a prescription by thedim, uncertain light. He told me to put the last basketful in the littlecloset off the hall and then come and get my pay. I took the coal into thecloset, but I do not know what I did with it. As I opened the door andstepped in, a tall skeleton got down off the nail and embraced me like aprodigal son. It fell on my neck and draped itself all over me. Itsglittering phalanges entered the bosom of my gingham shirt and restedlightly on the pit of my stomach. I could feel the pelvis bone in thesmall of my back. The room was dark, but I did not light the gas. Whetherit was the skeleton of a lady or gentleman, I never knew; but I thought, for the sake of my good name, I would not remain. My good name and astrong yearning for home were all that I had at that time. 

So I went home. Afterwards, I learned that this physician got all his coalcarried up stairs for nothing in this way, and he had tried to get roomstwo flights further up in the building, so that the boys would havefurther to fall when they made their egress. 

About Portraits. 

Hudson, Wis. , August 25, 1885. 

Hon. William F. Vilas, Postmaster-General, Washington, D. C. 

Dear Sir, --For some time I have been thinking of writing to you and askingyou how you were getting along with your department since I left it. I didnot wish to write you for the purpose of currying favor with anadministration against which I squandered a ballot last fall. Neither do Idesire to convey the impression that I would like to open a correspondencewith you for the purpose of killing time. If you ever feel like sittingdown and answering this letter in an off-hand way it would please me verymuch, but do not put yourself out to do so. I wanted to ask you, however, how you like the pictures of yourself recently published by the patentinsides. That was my principal object in writing. Having seen you beforethis great calamity befell you, I wanted to inquire whether you had reallychanged so much. As I remember your face, it was rather unusuallyintellectual and attractive for a great man. Great men are very rarelypretty. I guess that, aside from yourself, myself, and Mr. Evarts, thereis hardly an eminent man in the country who would be considered handsome. But the engraver has done you a great injustice, or else you have sadlychanged since I saw you. It hardly seems possible that your nose hasdrifted around to leeward and swelled up at the end, as the engraver wouldhave us believe. I do not believe that in a few short months the look offirmness and conscious rectitude that I noticed could have changed to thatof indecision and vacuity which we see in some of your late portraits asprinted. 

[Illustration: A NOSE ON THE BIAS. ]

I saw one yesterday, with your name attached to it, and it made my heartache for your family. As a resident in your State I felt humiliated. Twoof Wisconsin's ablest men have been thus slaughtered by the rude broad-axeof the engraver. Last fall, Senator Spooner, who is also a man with afirst-class head and face, was libeled in this same reckless way. It makesme mad, and in that way impairs my usefulness. I am not a good citizen, husband or father when I am mad. I am a perfect simoom of wrath at suchtimes, and I am not responsible for what I do. 

Nothing can arouse the indignation of your friends, regardless of party, so much as the thought that while you are working so hard in thepostoffice at Washington with your coat off, collecting box rent andmaking up the Western mail, the remorseless engraver and electrotyper areseeking to down you by making pictures of you in which you appear eitheras a dude or a tough. 

While I have not the pleasure of being a member of your party, havingbelonged to what has been sneeringly alluded to as the g. O. P. , I cannotrefrain from expressing my sympathy at this time. Though we may havediffered heretofore upon important questions of political economy, Icannot exult over these portraits. Others may gloat over these efforts toinjure you, but I do not. I am not much of a gloater, anyhow. 

I leave those to gloat who are in the gloat business. 

Still, it is one of the drawbacks incident to greatness. We struggle hardthrough life that we may win the confidence of our fellow-men, only atlast to have pictures of ourselves printed and distributed where they willinjure us. 

[Illustration: ASSORTED PHYSIOGNOMY. ]

I desire to add before closing this letter, Mr. Vilas, that with those whoare acquainted with you and know your sterling worth, these portraits willmake no difference. We will not allow them to influence us socially orpolitically. What the effect may be upon offensive partisans who are totalstrangers to you, I do not know. 

My theory in relation to these cuts is, that they are combined andinterchangeable, so that, with slight modifications, they are used for allgreat men. The cut, with the extras that go with it, consists of one headwith hair (front view), one bald head (front view), one head with hair(side view), one bald head (side view), one pair eyes (with glasses), onepair eyes (plain), one Roman nose, one Grecian nose, one turn-up nose, oneset whiskers (full), one moustache, one pair side-whiskers, one chin, oneset large ears, one set medium ears, one set small ears, one setshoulders, with collar and necktie for above, one monkey-wrench, one setquoins, one galley, one oil can, one screwdriver. These different featuresare then arranged so that a great variety of clergymen, murderers, senators, embezzlers, artists, dynamiters, humorists, arsonists, larcenists, poets, statesmen, base ball players, rinkists, pianists, capitalists, bigamists and sluggists are easily represented. No newspaperoffice should be without them. They are very simple, and any child caneasily learn to operate it. They are invaluable in all cases, for no oneknows at what moment a revolting crime may be committed by a comparativelyunknown man, whose portrait you wish to give, and in this age of rapidpolitical transformations, presentations and combinations, no enterprisingpaper should delay the acquisition of a combined portrait for the use ofits readers. 

Hoping that you are well, and that you will at once proceed to let noguilty man escape, I remain, yours truly, Bill Nye. 

The Old South. 

The Old South Meeting House, in Boston, is the most remarkable structurein many respects to be found in that remarkable city. Always eagerwherever I go to search out at once the gospel privileges, it is not to bewondered at, that I should have gone to the Old South the first day afterI landed in Boston. 

It is hardly necessary to go over the history of the Old South, except, perhaps, to refresh the memory of those who live outside of Boston. TheOld South Society was organized in 1669, and the ground on which the oldmeetinghouse now stands was given by Mrs. Norton, the widow of Rev. JohnNorton, since deceased. The first structure was of wood, and in 1729 thepresent brick building succeeded it. King's Handbook of Boston says: "Itis one of the few historic buildings that have been allowed to remain inthis iconoclastic age. "

So it seems that they are troubled with iconoclasts in Boston, too. Ithought I saw one hanging around the Old South on the day I was there, andhad a good notion to point him out to the authorities, but thought it wasnone of my business. 

I went into the building and registered, and then from force of habit orabsent-mindedness handed my umbrella over the counter and asked how soonsupper would be ready. Everybody registers, but very few, I am told, askhow soon supper will be ready. The Old South is now run on the Europeanplan, however. 

The old meeting-house is chiefly remarkable for the associations thatcluster around it. Two centuries hover about the ancient weather-vane andlook down upon the visitor when the weather is favorable. 

Benjamin Franklin was baptized and attended worship here, prior to hiswonderful invention of lightning. Here on each succeeding Sabbath sat theman who afterwards snared the forked lightning with a string and put itin a jug for future generations. Here Whitefield preached and the rebelsdiscussed the tyranny of the British king. Warren delivered his famousspeech here upon the anniversary of the Boston massacre and the "teaparty" organized in this same building. Two hundred years ago exactly, the British used the Old South as a military riding school, although amajority of the people of Boston were not in favor of it. 

It would be well to pause here and consider the trying situation in whichour ancestors were placed at that time. Coming to Massachusetts as theydid, at a time when the country was new and prices extremely high, theyhad hoped to escape from oppression and establish themselves so far awayfrom the tyrant that he could not come over here and disturb them withoutsuffering from the extreme nausea incident to a long sea voyage. Alas, however, when they landed at Plymouth rock there was not a decent hotel inthe place. The same stern and rock-bound coast which may be discoveredalong the Atlantic sea-board to-day was there, and a cruel, relentless skyfrowned upon their endeavors. 

Where prosperous cities now flaunt to the sky their proud domes andfloating debts, the rank jimson weed nodded in the wind and the pumpkinpie of to-day still slumbered in the bosom of the future. What gloriousfacts have, under the benign influence of fostering centuries, been bornof apparent impossibility. What giant certainties have grown through theseyears from the seeds of doubt and discouragement and uncertainty! (Bigfirecrackers and applause. )

[Illustration: MR. FRANKLIN EXPERIMENTS. ]

At that time our ancestors had but timidly embarked in the forefatherbusiness. They did not know that future generations in four-buttoncutaways would rise up and call them blessed and pass resolutions ofrespect on their untimely death. If they stayed at home the king taxedthem all out of shape, and if they went out of Boston a few rods to getenough huckleberries for breakfast, they would frequently come home sofull of Indian arrows that they could not get through a common doorwithout great pain. 

Such was the early history of the country where now cultivation andeducation and refinement run rampant and people sit up all night to printnewspapers so that we can have them in the morning. 

The land on which the Old South stands is very valuable for businesspurposes, and $400, 000 will have to be raised in order to preserve the oldlandmark to future generations. I earnestly hope that it will be secured, and that the old meeting-house--dear not alone to the people of Boston, but to the millions of Americans scattered from sea to sea, who cannotforget where first universal freedom plumed its wings--will be spared toentertain within its hospitable walls, enthusiastic and reverentialvisitors for ages without end. 

Knights of the Pen. 

When you come to think of it, it is surprising that so many newspaper menwrite so that any one but an expert can read it. The rapid and voluminouswork, especially of daily journalism, knocks the beautiful businesscollege penman, as a rule, higher than a kite. I still have specimens ofmy own handwriting that a total stranger could read. 

I do not remember a newspaper acquaintance whose penmanship is socharacteristic of the exacting neatness and sharp, clear cut style of theman, as is that of Eugene Field, of the Chicago _News_. As the "NonpareilWriter" of the Denver _Tribune_, it was a mystery to me when he did thework which the paper showed each day as his own. You would sometimes findhim at his desk, writing on large sheets of "print paper" with a pen andviolet ink, in a hand that was as delicate as the steel plate of a banknote and the kind of work that printers would skirmish for. He would askyou to sit down in the chair opposite his desk, which had two or three oldexchanges thrown on it. He would probably say, "Never mind those papers. I've read them. Just sit down on them if you want to. " Encouraged by hishearty manner, you would sit down, and you would continue to sit down tillyou had protruded about three-fourths of your system through that hollowmockery of a chair. Then he would run to help you out and curse the chair, and feel pained because he had erroneously given you the ruin with no seatto it. He always felt pained over such things. He always suffered keenlyand felt shocked over the accident until you had gone away, and then hewould sigh heavily and "set" the chair again. 

[Illustration: THE RUIN. ]

Frank Pixley, the editor of the San Francisco _Argonaut_, is notbeautiful, though the _Argonaut_ is. He is grim and rather on the MosesMontefiore style of countenance, but his hand-writing does not convey theidea of the man personally, or his style of dealing with the Chinesequestion. It is rather young looking, and has the uncertain manner of aneighteen-year-old boy. 

Robert J. Burdette writes a small but plain hand, though he sometimessuffers from the savage typographical error that steals forth at such amoment as ye think not, and disfigures and tears and mangles the brighteyed children of the brain. 

Very often we read a man's work and imagine we shall find him like it, cheery, bright and entertaining; but we know him and find that personallyhe is a refrigerator, or an egotist, or a man with a torpid liver and anose like a rose geranium. You will not be disappointed in Bob Burdette, however, You think you will like him, and you always do. He will never betoo famous to be a gentleman. 

George W. Peck's hand is of the free and independent order of chirography. It is easy and natural, but not handsome. He writes very voluminously, doing his editorial writing in two days of the week, generally Friday andSaturday. Then he takes a rapid horse, a zealous bird dog and an improveddouble barrel duck destroyer and communes with nature. 

Sam Davis, an old time Californian, and now in Nevada, writes the freestof any penman I know. When he is deliberate, he may be betrayed intomaking a deformed letter and a crooked mark attached to it, which hecharacterizes as a word. He puts a lot of these together and actually payspostage on the collection under the delusion that it is a letter, that itwill reach its destination, and that it will accomplish its object. 

He makes up for his bad writing, however, by being an unpublished volumeof old time anecdotes and funny experiences. 

Goodwin, of the old _Territorial Enterprise_, and Mark Twain's oldemployer, writes with a pencil in a methodical manner and very plainly. The way he sharpens a "hard medium" lead pencil and skins the apostle ofthe so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, makes my heartglad. Hardly a day passes that his life is not threatened by the lowbrowed thumpers of Mormondom, and yet the old war horse raises thestandard of monogamy and under the motto, "One country, one flag and onewife at a time, " he smokes his old meerschaum pipe and writes a column ofrazor blades every day. He is the buzz saw upon which polygamy has triedto sit. Fighting these rotten institutions hand to hand and fighting areligious eccentricity through an annual message, or a feeble act ofcongress, are two separate and distinct things. 

If I had a little more confidence in my longevity than I now have, I wouldgo down there to the Valley of the Jordan, and I would gird up my loins, and I would write with that lonely warrior at Salt Lake, and with the aidand encouragement of our brethren of the press who do not favor the rightof one man to marry an old woman's home, we would rotten egg the bogusTemple of Zion till the civilized world, with a patent clothes pin on itsnose, would come and see what was the matter. 

I see that my zeal has led me away from my original subject, but I haven'ttime to regret it now. 

The Wild Cow. 

When I was young and used to roam around over the country, gatheringwater-melons in the light of the moon, I used to think I could milkanybody's cow, but I do not think so now. I do not milk a cow now unlessthe sign is right, and it hasn't been right for a good many years. Thelast cow I tried to milk was a common cow, born in obscurity; kind of aself-made cow. I remember her brow was low, but she wore her tail high andshe was haughty, oh, so haughty. 

I made a common-place remark to her, one that is used in the very best ofsociety, one that need not have given offence anywhere. I said "So"--andshe "soed. " Then I told her to "hist" and she histed. But I thought sheoverdid it. She put too much expression in it. 

Just then I heard something crash through the window of the barn and fallwith a dull, sickening thud on the outside. The neighbors came to see whatit was that caused the noise. They found that I had done it in gettingthrough the window. 

I asked the neighbors if the barn was still standing. They said it was. Then I asked if the cow was injured much. They said she seemed to be quiterobust. Then I requested them to go in and calm the cow a little, and seeif they could get my plug hat off her horns. 

I am buying all my milk now of a milkman. I select a gentle milkman whowill not kick, and feel as though I could trust him. Then, if he feels asthough he could trust me, it is all right. 

[Illustration: THE WILD COW. ]

Spinal Meningitis. 

So many people have shown a pardonable curiosity about the above nameddisease, and so few have a very clear idea of the thrill of pleasure itaffords the patient, unless they have enjoyed it themselves, that I havedecided to briefly say something in answer to the innumerable inquiries Ihave received. 

Up to the moment I had a notion of getting some meningitis, I had neveremployed a physician. Since then I have been thrown in their society agreat deal. Most of them were very pleasant and scholarly gentlemen, whowill not soon be forgotten; but one of them doctored me first forpneumonia, then for inflammatory rheumatism, and finally, when death wascontiguous, advised me that I must have change of scene and rest. 

I told him that if he kept on prescribing for me, I thought I might dependon both. Change of physicians, however, saved my life. This horse doctor, a few weeks afterward, administered a subcutaneous morphine squirt in thearm of a healthy servant girl because she had the headache, and she is nowwith the rest of this veterinarian's patients in a land that is fairerthan this. 

She lived six hours after she was prescribed for. He gave her change ofscene and rest. He has quite a thriving little cemetery filled with peoplewho have succeeded in cording up enough of his change of scene and rest tolast them through all eternity. He was called once to prescribe for a manwhose head had been caved in by a stone match-box, and, after treating theman for asthma and blind staggers, he prescribed rest and change of scenefor him, too. The poor asthmatic is now breathing the extremely rarifiedair of the New Jerusalem. 

Meningitis is derived from the Latin _Meninges_, membrane, and--_itis_, anaffix denoting inflammation, so that, strictly speaking, meningitis is theinflammation of a membrane, and when applied to the spine, or cerebrum, iscalled spinal meningitis, or cerebro-spinal meningitis, etc. , according tothe part of the spine or brain involved in the inflammation. Meningitis isa characteristic and result of so-called spotted fever, and by many it isdeemed identical with it. 

When we come to consider that the spinal cord, or marrow, runs downthrough the long, bony shaft made by the vertebrae, and that the brain andspine, though connected, are bound up in one continuous bony wall andcovered with this inflamed membrane, it is not difficult to understandthat the thing is very hard to get at. If your throat gets inflamed, adoctor asks you to run your tongue out into society about a yard and ahalf, and he pries your mouth open with one of Rogers Brothers' spoonhandles. Then he is able to examine your throat as he would a page of the_Congressional Record_, and to treat it with some local application. Whenyou have spinal meningitis, however, the doctor tackles you with bromides, ergots, ammonia, iodine, chloral hydrate, codi, bromide of ammonia, hasheesh, bismuth, valerianate of ammonia, morphine sulph. , nux vomica, turpentine emulsion, vox humana, rex magnus, opium, cantharides, Dover'spowders, and other bric-a-brac. These remedies are masticated and actedupon by the salivary glands, passed down the esophagus, thrown into thesociety of old gastric, submitted to the peculiar motion of the stomachand thoroughly chymified, then forwarded through the pyloric orifice intothe smaller intestines, where they are touched up with bile, and later onhanded over through the lacteals, thoracic duct, etc. , to the vastcirculatory system. Here it is yanked back and forth through the heart, lungs and capillaries, and if anything is left to fork over to thedisease, it has to squeeze into the long, bony, air-tight socket thatholds the spinal cord. All this is done without seeing the patient'sspinal cord before or after taking. If it could be taken out, and hungover a clothes line and cleansed with benzine, and then treated withinsect powder, or rolled in corn meal, or preserved in alcohol, and thenput back, it would be all right; but you can't. You pull a man's spine outof his system and he is bound to miss it, no matter how careful you havebeen about it. It is difficult to keep house without the spine. You needit every time you cook a meal. If the spinal cord could be pulled by adentist and put away in pounded ice every time it gets a hot-box, spinalmeningitis would lose its stinger. 

I was treated by thirteen physicians, whose names I may give in a futurearticle. They were, as I said, men I shall long remember. One of them saidvery sensibly that meningitis was generally over-doctored. I told him thatI agreed with him. I said that if I should have another year of meningitisand thirteen more doctors, I would have to postpone my trip to Europe, where I had hoped to go and cultivate my voice. I've got a perfectlylovely voice, if I would take it to Europe and have it sand-papered andvarnished, and mellowed down with beer and bologna. 

But I was speaking of my physicians. Some time I'm going to give theirbiographies and portraits, as they did those of Dr. Bliss, Dr. Barnes andothers. Next year, if I can get railroad rates, I am going to hold areunion of my physicians in Chicago. It will be a pleasant relaxation forthem, and will save the lives of a large percentage of their patients. 

Skimming the Milky Way. 

THE COMET. 

The comet is a kind of astronomical parody on the planet. Comets look somelike planets, but they are thinner and do not hurt so hard when they hitanybody as a planet does. The comet was so called because it had hair onit, I believe, but late years the bald-headed comet is giving just as goodsatisfaction everywhere. 

The characteristic features of a comet are: A nucleus, a nebulous light orcoma, and usually a luminous train or tail worn high. Sometimes severaltails are observed on one comet, but this occurs only in flush times. 

When I was young I used to think I would like to be a comet in the sky, upabove the world so high, with nothing to do but loaf around and play withthe little new-laid planets and have a good time, but now I can see whereI was wrong. Comets also have their troubles, their perihilions, theirhyperbolas and their parabolas. A little over 300 years ago Tycho Brahediscovered that comets were extraneous to our atmosphere, and since thentimes have improved. I can see that trade is steadier and potatoes runless to tows than they did before. 

Soon after that they discovered that comets all had more or lessperiodicity. Nobody knows how they got it. All the astronomers had beenwatching them day and night and didn't know when they were exposed, butthere was no time to talk and argue over the question. There were two orthree hundred comets all down with it at once. It was an exciting time. 

Comets sometimes live to a great age. This shows that the night air is notso injurious to the health as many people would have us believe. The greatcomet of 1780 is supposed to have been the one that was noticed about thetime of Caesar's death, 44 B. C. , and still, when it appeared in Newton'stime, seventeen hundred years after its first grand farewell tour, Ikesaid that it was very well preserved, indeed, and seemed to have retainedall its faculties in good shape. 

Astronomers say that the tails of all comets are turned from the sun. I donot know why they do this, whether it is etiquette among them or just amere habit. 

A later writer on astronomy said that the substance of the nebulosity andthe tail is of almost inconceivable tenuity. He said this and then deathcame to his relief. Another writer says of the comet and its tail that"the curvature of the latter and the acceleration of the periodic time inthe case of Encke's comet indicate their being affected by a resistingmedium which has never been observed to have the slightest influence onthe planetary periods. "

I do not fully agree with the eminent authority, though he may be right. Much fear has been the result of the comet's appearance ever since theworld began, and it is as good a thing to worry about as anything I knowof. If we could get close to a comet without frightening it away, we wouldfind that we could walk through it anywhere as we could through the glareof a torchlight procession. We should so live that we will not be ashamedto look a comet in the eye, however. Let us pay up our newspapersubscription and lead such lives that when the comet strikes we will beready. 

[Illustration: TYCHO BRAHE AT WORK. ]

Some worry a good deal about the chances for a big comet to plow into thesun some dark, rainy night, and thus bust up the whole universe. I wishthat was all I had to worry about. If any respectable man will agree topay my taxes and funeral expenses, I will agree to do his worrying aboutthe comet's crashing into the bosom of the sun and knocking its daylightsout. 

THE SUN. 

This luminous body is 92, 000, 000 miles from the earth, though there havebeen mornings this winter when it seemed to me that it was further thanthat. A railway train going at the rate of 40 miles per hour would be 263years going there, to say nothing of stopping for fuel or water, orstopping on side tracks to wait for freight trains to pass. Several yearsago it was discovered that a slight error had been made in thecalculations of the sun's distance from the earth, and, owing to amisplaced logarithm, or something of that kind, a mistake of 3, 000, 000miles was made in the result. People cannot be too careful in suchmatters. Supposing that, on the strength of the information contained inthe old time-table, a man should start out with only provisions sufficientto take him 89, 000, 000 miles and should then find that 3, 0000, 000 milesstill stretched out ahead of him. He would then have to buy fresh figs ofthe train boy in order to sustain life. Think of buying nice fresh figs ona train that had been _en route_ 250 years!

Imagine a train boy starting out at ten years of age, and perishing at theage of 60 years with only one-fifth of his journey accomplished. Think offive train boys, one after the other, dying of old age on the way, and thetrain at last pulling slowly into the depot with not a living thing onboard except the worms in the "nice eating apples!"

The sun cannot be examined through an ordinary telescope with impunity. Only one man every tried that, and he is now wearing a glass eye that costhim $9. 

If you examine the sun through an ordinary solar microscope, you discoverthat it has a curdled or mottled appearance, as though suffering frombiliousness. It is also marked here and there by long streaks of light, called faculae, which look like foam flecks below a cataract. The spots onthe sun vary from minute pores the size of an ordinary school district tospots 100, 000 miles in diameter, visible to the nude eye. The center ofthese spots is as black as a brunette cat, and is called the umbra, socalled because it resembles an umbrella. The next circle is less dark, andcalled the penumbra, because it so closely resembles the penumbra. 

There are many theories regarding these spots, but, to be perfectly candidwith the gentle reader, neither Prof. Proctor nor myself can tell exactlywhat they are. If we could get a little closer, we flatter ourselves thatwe could speak more definitely. My own theory is they are either, first, open air caucuses held by the colored people of the sun; or, second, theymay be the dark horses in the campaign; or, third, they may be the spotsknocked off the defeated candidate by the opposition. 

Frankly, however, I do not believe either of these theories to be tenable. Prof. Proctor sneers at these theories also on the ground that these spotsdo not appear to revolve so fast as the sun. This, however, I am preparedto explain upon the theory that this might be the result of delays in thereturns However, I am free to confess that speculative science is filledwith the intangible. 

The sun revolves upon his or her axletree, as the case may be, once in 25to 28 of our days, so that a man living there would have almost two yearsto pay a 30-day note. We should so live that when we come to die we may goat once to the sun. 

Regarding the sun's temperature, Sir John Herschel says that it issufficient to melt a shell of ice covering its entire surface to a depthof 40 feet. I do not know whether he made this experiment personally orhired a man to do it for him. 

The sun is like the star spangled banner--as it is "still there. " You getup to-morrow morning just before sunrise and look away toward the east, and keep on looking in that direction, and at last you will see a finesight, if what I have been told is true. If the sunrise is as grand as thesunset, it indeed must be one of nature's most sublime phenomena. 

The sun is the great source of light and heat for our earth. If the sunwere to go somewhere for a few weeks for relaxation and rest, it would bea cold day for us. The moon, too, would be useless, for she is largelydependent on the sun. Animal life would soon cease and real estate wouldbecome depressed in price. We owe very much of our enjoyment to the sun, and not many years ago there were a large number of people who worshipedthe sun. When a man showed signs of emotional insanity, they took him upon the observatory of the temple and sacrificed him to the sun. They werea very prosperous and happy people. If the conqueror had not come amongthem with civilization and guns and grand juries they would have been veryhappy, indeed. 

[Illustration: A COLD DAY. ]

THE STARS. 

There is much in the great field of astronomy that is discouraging to thesavant who hasn't the time nor means to rummage around through theheavens. At times I am almost hopeless, and feel like saying to the greatyearnful, hungry world: "Grope on forever. Do not ask me for anotherscientific fact. Find it out yourself. Hunt up your own new-laid planets, and let me have a rest. Never ask me again to sit up all night and takecare of a newborn world, while you lie in bed and reck not. "

I get no salary for examining the trackless void night after night when Iought to be in bed. I sacrifice my health in order that the public mayknow at once of the presence of a red-hot comet, fresh from the factory. And yet, what thanks do I get?

Is it surprising that every little while I contemplate withdrawing fromscientific research, to go and skin an eight-mule team down through thedim vista of relentless years?

Then, again, you take a certain style of star, which you learn fromProfessor Simon Newcomb is such a distance that it takes 50, 000 years forits light to reach Boston. Now, we will suppose that after looking overthe large stock of new and second-hand stars, and after examining thespring catalogue and price list, I decide that one of the smaller sizewill do me, and I buy it. How do I know that it was there when I boughtit? Its cold and silent rays may have ceased 49, 000 years before I wasborn and the intelligence be still on the way. There is too much marginbetween sale and delivery. Every now and then another astronomer comes tome and says: "Professor, I have discovered another new star and intend tofile it. Found it last night about a mile and a half south of the zenith, running loose. Haven't heard of anybody who has lost a star of thefifteenth magnitude, about thirteen hands high, with light mane and tail, have you?" Now, how do I know that he has discovered a brand new star?How can I discover whether he is or is not playing an old, threadbare staron me for a new one?

We are told that there has been no perceptible growth or decay in the starbusiness since man began to roam around through space, in his mind, andmake figures on the barn door with red chalk showing the celestial timetable. 

No serious accidents have occurred in the starry heavens since I began toobserve and study their habits. Not a star has waxed, not a star haswaned to my knowledge. Not a planet has season-cracked or shown any ofthe injurious effects of our rigorous climate. Not a star has ripenedprematurely or fallen off the trees. The varnish on the very oldest starsI find on close and critical examination to be in splendid condition. They will all no doubt wear as long as we need them, and wink on longafter we have ceased to wink back. 

In 1866 there appeared suddenly in the northern crown a star of about thethird magnitude and worth at least $250. It was generally conceded byastronomers that this was a brand new star that had never been used, butupon consulting Argelander's star catalogue and price list it was foundthat this was not a new star at all, but an old, faded star of the ninthmagnitude, with the front breadths turned wrong side out and trimmed withmoonlight along the seams. After a few days of phenomenal brightness, itgently ceased to draw a salary as a star of the third magnitude, andwalked home with an Uncle Tom's Cabin company. 

[Illustration: A NIGHTLY VIGIL. ]

It is such things as this that make the life of the astronomer one ofconstant and discouraging toil. I have long contemplated, as I say, theadvisability of retiring from this field of science and allowing others tolight the northern lights, skim the milky way and do other celestialchores. I would do it myself cheerfully if my health would permit, but foryears I have realized, and so has my wife, that my duties as an astronomerkept me up too much at night, and my wife is certainly right about it whenshe says if I insist on scanning the heavens night after night, cominghome late with the cork out of my telescope and my eyes red and swollenwith these exhausting night vigils, I will be cut down in my prime. So Iam liable to abandon the great labor to which I had intended to devote mylife, my dazzling genius and my princely income. I hope that other savantswill spare me the pain of another refusal, for my mind is fully made upthat unless another skimmist is at once secured, the milky way willhenceforth remain unskum. 

A Thrilling Experience. 

I had a very thrilling experience the other evening. I had just filled anengagement in a strange city, and retired to my cozy room at the hotel. 

The thunders of applause had died away, and the opera house had beenlocked up to await the arrival of an Uncle Tom's Cabin Company. The lastloiterer had returned to his home, and the lights in the palace of thepork packer were extinguished. 

No sound was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, orthe death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was still as thebosom of a fried chicken when the spirit has departed. 

The swallow-tail coat hung limp and weary in the wardrobe, and the grossreceipts of the evening were under my pillow. I needed sleep, for I wasworn out with travel and anxiety, but the fear of being robbed kept mefrom repose. I know how desperate a man becomes when he yearns foranother's gold. I know how cupidity drives a wicked man to mangle hisvictim, that he may win precarious prosperity, and how he will often takea short cut to wealth by means of murder, when, if he would enterpolitics, he might accomplish his purpose as surely and much more safely. 

Anon, however, tired nature succumbed. I know I had succumbed, for thebell-boy afterward testified that he heard me do so. 

The gentle warmth of the steam-heated room, and the comforting assuranceof duty well done and the approval of friends, at last lulled me into agentle repose. 

Anyone who might have looked upon me, as I lay there in that innocentslumber, with the winsome mouth slightly ajar and the playful limbs castwildly about, while a merry smile now and then flitted across the regularfeatures, would have said that no heart could be so hard as to harbor illfor one so guileless and so simple. 

I do not know what it was that caused me to wake. Some slight sound orother, no doubt, broke my slumber, and I opened my eyes wildly. The roomwas in semi-darkness. 

Hark!

A slight movement in the corner, and the low, regular breathing of a humanbeing! I was now wide awake. Possibly I could have opened my eyes wider, but not without spilling them out of their sockets. 

Regularly came that soft, low breathing. Each time it seemed like a sighof relief, but it did not relieve me. Evidently it was not done for thatpurpose. It sounded like a sigh of blessed relief, such as a woman mightheave after she has returned from church and transferred herself from theembrace of her new Russia iron, black silk dress into a friendly wrapper. 

Regularly, like the rise and fall of a wave on the summer sea, it rose andfell, while my pale lambrequin of hair rose and fell fitfully with it. 

I know that people who read this will laugh at it, but there was nothingto laugh at. At first I feared that the sigh might be that of a woman whohad entered the room through a transom in order to see me, as I lay wraptin slumber, and then carry the picture away to gladden her whole life. 

But no. That was hardly possible. It was cupidity that had driven somecruel villain to enter my apartments and to crouch in the gloom till theproper moment should come in which to spring upon me, throttle me, crowd ahotel pillow into each lung, and, while I did the Desdemona act, rob me ofmy hard-earned wealth. 

Regularly still rose the soft breathing, as though the robber might betrying to suppress it. I reached gently under the pillow, and securing themoney I put it in the pocket of my _robe de nuit_. Then, with great care, I pulled out a copy of Smith & Wesson's great work on "How to Ventilatethe Human Form. " I said to myself that I would sell my life as dearly aspossible, so that whoever bought it would always regret the trade. 

Then I opened the volume at the first chapter and addressed a thirty-eight calibre remark in the direction of the breath in the corner. 

When the echoes had died away a sigh of relief welled up from the darkcorner. Also another sigh of relief later on. 

I then decided to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt seen aman scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you have alsoseen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that hispantaloons were hanging on a chair at the other end of the room. 

However, I lit the gas with my left hand and kept my revolver pointedtoward the dark corner where the breath was still rising and falling. 

People who had heard my lecture came rushing in, hoping to find that I hadsuicided, but they found that, instead of humoring the public in that way, I had shot the valve off the steam radiator. 

It is humiliating to write the foregoing myself, but I would rather do sothan have the affair garbled by careless hands. 

Catching a Buffalo. 

A pleasing anecdote is being told through the press columns recently, ofan encounter on the South Platte, which occurred some years ago between aTexan and a buffalo. The recital sets forth the fact that the Texans wentout to hunt buffalo, hoping to get enough for a mess during the day. Toward evening they saw two gentlemen buffalo on a neighboring hill nearthe Platte, and at once pursued their game, each selecting an animal. Theyseparated at once, Jack going one way galloping after his beast, while Samwent in the other direction. Jack soon got a shot at his game, but thebullet only tore a large hole in the fleshy shoulder of the bull andburied itself in the neck, maddening the animal to such a degree that heturned at once and charged upon horse and rider. 

The astonished horse, with the wonderful courage, sagacity and _sangfroid_ peculiar to the broncho, whirled around two consecutive times, tangled his feet in the tall grass and fell, throwing his rider aboutfifty feet. He then rose and walked away to a quiet place, where he couldconsider the matter and give the buffalo an opportunity to recover. 

The infuriated bull then gave chase to Jack, who kept out of the way for afew yards only, when, getting his legs entangled in the grass, he fell sosuddenly that his pursuer dashed over him without doing him any bodilyinjury. However, as the animal went over his prostrate form, Jack felt thebuffalo's tail brush across his face, and, rising suddenly, he caught itwith a terrific grip and hung to it, thus keeping out of the reach of hisenemy's horns, till his strength was just giving out, when Sam hove insight and put a large bullet through the bull's heart. 

This tale is told, apparently, by an old plainsman and scout, who reels itoff as though he might be telling his own experience. 

Now, I do not wish to seem captious and always sticking my nose into whatis none of my business, but as a logical and zoological fact, I desire, inmy cursory way, to coolly take up the subject of the buffalo tail. Thosewho have been in the habit of killing buffaloes, instead of running anaccount at the butcher shop, will remember that this noble animal has agenuine camel's hair tail about eight inches long, with a chenille tasselat the end, which he throws up into the rarified atmosphere of the farwest, whenever he is surprised or agitated. 

In passing over a prostrate man, therefore, I apprehend that in order tobrush his face with the average buffalo tail, it would be necessary forhim to sit down on the bosom of the prostrate scout and fan his featureswith the miniature caudal bud. 

The buffalo does not gallop an hundred miles a day, dragging his tailacross the bunch grass and alkali of the boundless plains. 

[Illustration: AN UNEQUAL MATCH. ]

He snorts a little, turns his bloodshot eyes toward the enemy a moment andthen, throwing his cunning little taillet over the dash-boardlet, he wingsaway in an opposite direction. 

The man who could lie on his back and grab that vision by the tail wouldhave to be moderately active. If he succeeded, however, it would be aquestion of the sixteenth part of a second only, whether he had his armsjerked out by the roots and scattered through space or whether he hadstrength of will sufficient to yank out the withered little frizz and toldthe quivering ornament in his hands. Few people have the moral courage tofollow a buffalo around over half a day holding on by the tail. It issaid that a Sioux brave once tried it, and they say his tracks werethirteen miles apart. After merrily sauntering around with the buffalo onehour, during which time he crossed the territories of Wyoming and Dakotatwice and surrounded the regular army three times, he became discouragedand died fiom the injuries he had received. Perhaps, however, it may havebeen fatigue. 

It might be possible for a man to catch hold of the meager tail of ameteor and let it snatch him through the coming years. 

It might be, that a man with a strong constitution could catch a cycloneand ride it bareback across the United States and then have a fresh oneready to ride back again, but to catch a buffalo bull in the full flush ofmanhood, as it were, and retain his tail while he crossed threereservations and two mountain ranges, requires great tenacity of purposeand unusual mental equipoise. 

Remember, I do not regard the story I refer to as false, at least I do notwish to be so understood. I simply say that it recounts an incident thatis rather out of the ordinary. Let the gentle reader lie down and have aJackrabbit driven across his face, for instance. The J. Rabbit is aslikely to brush your face with his brief and erect tail as the buffalowould be. Then carefully note how rapidly and promptly instantaneous youmust be. Then closely attend to the manner in which you abruptly andalmost simultaneously, have not retained the tail in your memory. 

A few people may have successfully seized the grieved and startled buffaloby the tail, but they are not here to testify to the circumstances. Theyare dead, abnormally and extremely dead. 

John Adams. 

After viewing the birthplace of the Adamses out at Quincy I felt morereconciled to my own birthplace. Comparing the house in which I was bornwith those in which other eminent philanthropists and high-pricedstatesmen originated, I find that I have no reason to complain. Neither ofthe Adamses were born in a larger house than I was, and for general toneand eclat of front yard and cook-room on behind, I am led to believe thatI have the advantage. 

John Adams was born before John Quincy Adams. A popular idea seems toprevail in some sections of the Union that inasmuch as John Q. Wasbald-headed, he was the eider of the two; but I inquired about that whileon the ground where they were both born, and ascertained from people whowere familiar with the circumstances, that John was born first. 

[Illustration: PRESIDENTIAL SIMPLICITY. ]

John Adams was the second president of the United States. He was a lawyerby profession, but his attention was called to politics by the passage ofthe stamp act in 1765. He was one of the delegates who representedMassachusetts in the first Continental Congress, and about that time hewrote a letter in which he said: "The die is now cast; I have passed therubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country ismy unalterable determination. " Some have expressed the opinion that "therubicon" alluded to by Mr. Adams in this letter was a law which he hadsucceeded in getting passed; but this is not true. The idea of passing therubicon first originated with Julius Caesar, a foreigner of some note whoflourished a good deal B. C. 

In June, 1776, Mr. Adams seconded a resolution, moved by Richard HenryLee, that the United States "are, and of right ought to be, free andindependent. " Whenever Mr. Adams could get a chance to whoop for libertynow and forever, one and inseparable, he invariably did so. 

In 1796, Mr. Adams ran for president. In the convention it was nip andtuck between Thomas Jefferson and himself, but Jefferson was understood tobe a Universalist, or an Universalist, whichever would look the best inprint, and so he only got 68 votes out of a possible 139. In 1800, however, Jefferson turned the tables on him, and Mr. Adams only received65 to Jefferson's 73 votes. 

Mr. Adams made a good president and earned his salary, though it wasn't somuch of a job as it is now. When there was no Indian war in those days thepresident could put on an old blue flannel shirt and such other clothes ashe might feel disposed to adopt, and fish for bull heads in the Potomactill his nose peeled in the full glare of the fervid sun. 

Now it is far different. By the time we get through with a presidentnowadays he isn't good for much. Mr. Hayes stood the fatigue of beingpresident better, perhaps, than any other man since the republic became solarge a machine. Mr. Hayes went home to Fremont with his mind just asfresh and his brain as cool as when he pulled up his coat tails to sitdown in the presidential chair. The reason why Mr. Hayes saved his mind, his brain and his salary, was plain enough when we stop to consider thathe did not use them much during his administration. 

John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States and theeldest son of John Adams. He was one of the most eloquent of orators, andshines in history as one of the most polished of our eminent andbald-headed Americans. When he began to speak, his round, smooth head, tolook down upon it from the gallery, resembled a nice new billiard ball, but as he warmed up and became more thoroughly stirred, his intellectualdome changed to a delicate pink. Then, when he rose to the full height ofhis eloquent flight, and prepared to swoop down upon his adversaries andcarry them into camp, it is said that his smooth intellectual rink was asred as the flush of rosy dawn on the 5th day of July. 

He was educated both at home and abroad. That is the reason he was sopolished. After he got so that he could readily spell and pronounce themost difficult words to be found in the large stores of Boston, he wassent to Europe, where he acquired several foreign tongues, and got so thathe could converse with the people of Europe very fluently, if they werefamiliar with English as she is spoke. 

John Quincy Adams was chosen president by the House of Representatives, there being no choice in the electoral contest, Adams receiving 84 votes, Andrew Jackson 99, William H. Crawford 41, and Henry Clay 37. Clay stoodin with Mr. Adams in the House of Representatives deal, it was said, andwas appointed secretary of state under Mr. Adams as a result. This may notbe true, but a party told me about it who got it straight from Washington, and he also told me in confidence that he made it a rule never toprevaricate. 

Mr. Adams was opposed to American slavery, and on several occasions inCongress alluded to his convictions. 

He was in Congress seventeen years, and during that time he was frequentlyon his feet attending to little matters in which he felt an interest, andwhen he began to make allusions, and blush all over the top of his head, and kick the desk, and throw ink-bottles at the presiding officer, theysay that John Q. Made them pay attention. Seward says, "with unwaveringfirmness, against a bitter and unscrupulous opposition, exasperated to thehighest pitch by his pertinacity--amidst a perfect tempest of vituperationand abuse--he persevered in presenting his anti-slavery petitions, one byone, to the amount sometimes of 200 in one day. " As one of his eminentbiographers has truly said: "John Quincy Adams was indeed no slouch. "

The Wail Of A Wife. 

"Ethel" has written a letter to me and asked for a printed reply. Leavingoff the opening sentences, which I would not care to have fall into thehands of my wife, her note is about as follows:

"---- Vt. , Feb. 28, 1885. 

My Dear Sir:

[Tender part of letter omitted for obvious reasons. ] Would it be askingtoo much for me to request a brief reply to one or two questions whichmany other married women as well as myself would like to have answered?

I have been married now for five years. To-day is the anniversary of mymarriage. When I was single I was a teacher and supported myself incomfort. I had more pocket-money and dressed fully as well if not betterthan I do now. Why should girls who are abundantly able to earn their ownlivelihood struggle to become the slave of a husband and children, and tiethemselves to a man when they might be free and happy?

I think too much is said by the men in a light and flippant manner aboutthe anxiety of young ladies to secure a home and a husband, and still theydo deserve a part of it, as I feel that I do now for assuming a greatburden when I was comparatively independent and comfortable. 

Now, will you suggest any advice that you think would benefit the yetunmarried and self-supporting girls who are liable to make the samemistake that I did, and thus warn them in a manner that would be so muchmore universal in its range, and reach so many more people than I could ifI should raise my voice? Do this and you will be gratefully remembered by

Ethel. "

It would indeed be a tough, tough man who could ignore thy gentle plea, Ethel; tougher far than the pale, intellectual hired man who now addressesyou in this private and underhanded manner, unknown to your husband. Please destroy this letter, Ethel, as soon as you see it in print, so thatit will not fall into the hands of Mr. Ethel, for if it should, I am gone. If your husband were to run across this letter in the public press I couldnever look him in the eye again. 

You say that you had more pocket-money before you were married than youhave since, Ethel, and you regret your rash step. I am sorry to hear it. You also say that you wore better clothes when you were single than you donow. You are also pained over that. It seems that marriage with you hasnot paid any cash dividends. So that if you married Mr. Ethel as afinancial venture, it was a mistake. You do not state how it has affectedyour husband. Perhaps he had more pocket-money and better clothes beforehe married than he has since. Sometimes two people do well in business bythemselves, but when they go into partnership they bust higher than akite, if you will allow me the free, English translation of a Romanexpression which you might not fully understand if I should give it to youin the original Roman. 

Lots of self-supporting young ladies have married and had to go very lighton pin-money after that, and still they did not squeal, as you, dearEthel. They did not marry for revenue only. They married for protection. (This is a little political bon mot which I thought of myself. Some of mybest jokes this spring are jokes that I thought of myself. )

No, Ethel, if you married expecting to be a dormant partner during the dayand then to go through Mr. Ethel's pantaloons pocket at night and declarea dividend, of course life is full of bitter, bitter regret anddisappointment. Perhaps it is also for Mr. Ethel. Anyhow, I can't helpfeeling a pang of sympathy for him. You do not say that he is unkind orthat he so far forgets himself as to wake you up in the morning with aharsh tone of voice and a yearling club. You do not say that he asks youfor pocket-money, or, if so, whether you give it to him or not. 

[Illustration: FOR REVENUE ONLY. ]

Of course I want to do what is right in the solemn warning business, so Iwill give notice to all simple young women who are now self-supporting andhappy, that there is no statute requiring them to assume the burdens ofwifehood and motherhood unless they prefer to do so. If they now haveabundance of pin-money and new clothes, they may remain single if theywish without violating the laws of the land. This rule is also good whenapplied to young and self-supporting young men who wear good clothes andhave funds in their pockets. No young man who is free, happy andindependent, need invest his money in a family or carry a colicky childtwenty-seven miles and two laps in one night unless he prefers it. Butthose who go into it with the right spirit, Ethel, do not regret it. 

I would just as soon tell you, Ethel, if you will promise that it shall gono farther, that I do not wear as good clothes as I did before I wasmarried. I don't have to. My good clothes have accomplished what I gotthem for. I played them for all they were worth, and since I got marriedthe idea of wearing clothes as a vocation has not occurred to me. 

Please give my kind regards to Mr. Ethel, and tell him that although I donot know him personally, I cannot help feeling sorry for him. 

[Illustration]

Bunker Hill. 

Last week for the first time I visited the granite obelisk known all overthe civilized world as Bunker Hill monument. Sixty years ago, if my memoryserves me correctly. General La Fayette, since deceased, laid thecorner-stone, and Daniel Webster made a few desultory remarks which Icannot now recall. Eighteen years later it was formally dedicated, andDaniel spoke a good piece, composed mostly of things that he had thoughtup himself. There has never been a feature of the early history andunceasing struggle for American freedom which has so roused my admirationas this custom, quite prevalent among congressmen in those days, ofwriting their own speeches. 

Many of Webster's most powerful speeches were written by himself or at hissuggestion. He was a plain, unassuming man, and did not feel above writinghis speeches. I have always had the greatest respect and admiration forMr. Webster as a citizen, as a scholar and as an extemporaneous speaker, and had he not allowed his portrait to appear last year in the _Century_, wearing an air of intense gloom and a plug hat entirely out of style, myrespect and admiration would have continued indefinitely. 

Bunker Hill monument is a great success as a monument, and the view fromits summit is said to be well worth the price of admission. I did notascend the obelisk, because the inner staircase was closed to visitors onthe day of my visit and the lightning rod on the outside looked to me asthough it had been recently oiled. 

On the following day, however, I engaged a man to ascend the monument andtell me his sensations. He assured me that they were first-rate. At thefeet of the spectator Boston and its environments are spread out in theglad sunshine. Every day Boston spreads out her environments just thatway. 

Bunker Hill monument is 221 feet in height, and has been entirely paidfor. The spectator may look at the monument with perfect impunity, withoutbeing solicited to buy some of its mortgage bonds. This adds much to thegenuine thrill of pleasure while gazing at it. 

There is a Bunker Hill in Macoupin County, Illinois, also in InghamCounty, Michigan, and in Russell County, Kansas, but General Warren wasnot killed at either of these points. 

One hundred and ten years ago, on the 17th day of the present month, oneof America's most noted battles with the British was fought near whereBunker Hill monument now stands. In that battle the British lost 1, 050 inkilled and wounded, while the American loss numbered but 450. While thepeople of this country are showing such an interest in our war history, Iam surprised that something has not been said about Bunker Hill. TheFederal forces from Roxbury to Cambridge were under command of GeneralArtemus Ward, the great American humorist. When the American humoristreally puts on his war paint and sounds the tocsin, he can organize agreat deal of mourning. 

General Ward was assisted by Putnam, Starke, Prescott, Gridley andPomeroy. Colonel William Prescott was sent over from Cambridge toCharlestown for the purpose of fortifying Bunker Hill. At a council of warit was decided to fortify Breeds Hill, not so high but nearer to Bostonthan Bunker Hill. So a redoubt was thrown up during the night on theground where the monument now stands. 

The British landed a large force under Generals Howe and Pigot, and at 2P. M. The Americans were reinforced by Generals Warren and Pomeroy. GeneralWarren was of a literary turn of mind and during the battle took his hatoff and recited a little poem beginning:

 "Stand, the ground's your own, my braves! Will ye give it up to slaves?"

A man who could deliver an impromptu and extemporaneous address like thatin public, and while there was such a bitter feeling of hostility on thepart of the audience, must have been a good scholar. In our greatfratricidal strife twenty years ago, the inferiority of our generals inthis respect was painfully noticeable. We did not have a commander whocould address his troops in rhyme to save his neck. Several of them werepretty good in blank verse, but it was so blank that it was not just thething to fork over to posterity and speak in school afterward. 

Colonel Prescott's statue now stands where he is supposed to have stoodwhen he told his men to reserve their fire till they saw the whites of theenemy's eyes. Those who have examined the cast-iron flint-lock weapon usedin those days will admit that this order was wise. Those guns were inunion to health, of course, when used to excess, but not necessarily orimmediately fatal. 

At the time of the third attack by the British, the Americans were out ofammunition, but they met the enemy with clubbed muskets, and it was foundthat one end of the rebel flint-lock was about as fatal as the other, ifnot more so. 

Boston still meets the invader with its club. The mayor says to thecitizens of Boston: "Wait till you can see the whites of the visitor'seyes, and then go for him with your clubs. " Then the visitor surrenders. 

I hope that many years may pass before it will again be necessary for usto soak this fair land in British blood. The boundaries of our land arenow more extended, and so it would take more blood to soak it. 

Boston has just reason to be proud of Bunker Hill, and it was certainly agreat stroke of enterprise to have the battle located there. Bunker Hillis dear to every American heart, and there are none of us who would nothave cheerfully gone into the battle then if we had known about it intime. 

A Lumber Camp. 

I have just returned from a little impromptu farewell tour in the lumbercamps toward Lake Superior. It was my idea to wade around in the snow fora few weeks and swallow baked beans and ozone on the 1/2 shell. The affairwas a success. I put up at Bootjack camp on the raging Willow River, wherethe gay-plumaged chipmunk and the spruce gum have their home. 

Winter in the pine woods is fraught with fun and frolic. It is morefraught with fatigue than funds, however. This winter a man in theMichigan and Wisconsin lumber camps could arise at 4:30 A. M. , eat apatent pail full of dried apples soaked with Young Hyson and sweetenedwith Persian glucose, go out to the timber with a lantern, hew down thegiants of the forest, with the snow up to the pit of his stomach, till thegray owl in the gathering gloom whooped and hooted in derision, and allfor $12 per month and stewed prunes. 

I did not try to accumulate wealth while I was in camp. I just allowedothers to enter into the mad rush and wrench a fortune from the hand offate while I studied human nature and the cook. I had a good many pleasantdays there, too. I read such literary works as I could find around thecamp, and smoked the royal Havana smoking tobacco of the cookee. Those whohave not lumbered much do not know much of true joy and sylvan smokingtobacco. 

They are not using a very good grade of the weed in the lumber regionsthis winter. When I say lumber regions I do not refer entirely to thecircumstances of a weak back. (Monkey-wrench, oil can and screwdriver sentwith this joke; also rules for working it in all kinds of goods. ) Thetobacco used by the pine choppers of the northern forest is called theScandihoovian. I do not know why they call it that, unless it is becauseyon can smoke it in Wisconsin and smell it in Scandihoovia. 

When night came we would gather around the blazing fire and talk over oldtimes and smoke this tobacco. I smoked it till last week, then I bought anew mouth and resolved to lead a different life. 

I shall never forget the evenings we spent together in that log shack inthe heart of the forest. They are graven on my memory where time'seffacing fingers can not monkey with them. We would most always converse. The crew talked the Norwegian language and I am using the English languagemostly this winter. So each enjoyed himself in his own quiet way. Thisseemed to throw the Norwegians a good deal together. It also threw me agood deal together. The Scandinavians soon learn our ways and ourlanguage, but prior to that they are quite clannish. 

[Illustration: I TOOK A PIE. ]

The cook, however, was an Ohio man. He spoke the Sandusky dialect with arich, nut brown flavor that did me much good, so that after I talked withthe crew a few hours in English, and received their harsh, corduroyreplies in Norske, I gladly fled to the cook shanty. There I could rapidlychange to the smoothly flowing sentences peculiar to the Ohio tongue, andwhile I ate the common twisted doughnut of commerce, we would talk on andon of the pleasant days we had spent in our native land. I don't know howmany hours I have thus spent, bringing the glad light into the eye of thecook as I spoke to him of Mrs. Hayes, an estimable lady, partiallymarried, and now living at Fremont, Ohio. 

I talked to him of his old home till the tears would unbidden start, as herolled out the dough with a common Budweiser beer bottle, and shed thescalding into the flour barrel. Tears are always unavailing, but sometimesI think they are more so when they are shed into a barrel of flour. He wasan easy weeper. He would shed tears on the slightest provocation, oranything else. Once I told him something so touchful that his eyes wereblinded with tears for the nonce. Then I took a pie, and stole away sothat he could be alone with his sorrow. 

He used to grind the coffee at 2 A. M. The coffee mill was nailed upagainst a partition on the opposite side from my bed. That is one reason Idid not stay any longer at the camp. It takes about an hour to grindcoffee enough for thirty men, and as my ear was generally against the pineboards when the cook began, it ruffled my slumbers and made me a moroseman. 

We had three men at the camp who snored. If they had snored in my ownlanguage I could have endured it, but it was entirely unintelligible to meas it was. Still, it wasn't bad either. They snored on different keys, andstill there was harmony in it--a kind of chime of imported snore as itwere. I used to lie and listen to it for hours. Then the cook would beginhis coffee mill overture and I would arise. 

When I got home I slept from Monday morning till Washington's Birthday, without food or water. 

My Lecture Abroad. 

Having at last yielded to the entreaties of Great Britain, I have decidedto make a professional farewell tour of England with my new and thrillinglecture, entitled "Jerked Across the Jordan, or the Sudden and DeservedElevation of an American Citizen. "

I have, therefore, already written some of the cablegrams which will besent to the Associated Press, in order to open the campaign in good shapein America on my return. 

Though I have been supplicated for some time by the people of England tocome over there and thrill them with my eloquence, my thriller has beenout of order lately, so that I did not dare venture abroad. 

This lecture treats incidentally of the ease with which an Americancitizen may rise in the Territories, when he has a string tied around hisneck, with a few personal friends at the other end of the string. It alsotreats of the various styles of oratory peculiar to America, withspecimens of American oratory that have been pressed and dried especiallyfor this lecture. It is a good lecture, and the few straggling factsscattered along through it don't interfere with the lecture itself in anyway. 

I shall appear in costume during the lecture. 

At each lecture a different costume will be worn, and the costume worn atthe previous lecture will be promptly returned to the owner. 

Persons attending the lecture need not be identified. 

Polite American dude ushers will go through the audience to keep the fliesaway from those who wish to sleep during the lecture. 

Should the lecture be encored at its close, it will be repeated only once. This encore business is being overdone lately, I think. 

Following are some of the cablegrams I have already written. If any onehas any suggestions as to change, or other additional favorablecriticisms, they will be gratefully received; but I wish to reserve theright, however, to do as I please about using them:

LONDON, ---, ---, --Bill Nye opened his foreign lecture engagement here lastevening with a can-opener. It was found to be in good order. As soon asthe doors were opened there was a mad rush for seats, during which threemen were fatally injured. They insisted on remaining through the lecture, however, and adding to its horrors. Before 8 o'clock 500 people had beenturned away. Mr. Nye announced that he would deliver a matinee thisafternoon, but he has been petitioned by tradesmen to refrain from doingso, as it will paralyze the business interests of the city to such adegree that they offer to "buy the house, " and allow the lecturer tocancel his engagement. 

LONDON, ---, ---. --The great lecturer and contortionist, Bill Nye, lastnight closed his six weeks' engagement here with his famous lecture on"The Rise and Fall of the American Horse Thief, " with a grand benefit andovation. The elite of London was present, many of whom have attended everyevening for six weeks to hear this same lecture. Those who can afford itwill follow the lecturer back to America, in order to be where they canhear this lecture almost constantly. 

Mr. Nye, at the beginning of the season, offered a prize to anyone whoshould neither be absent nor tardy through the entire six weeks. Aftersome hot discussion last evening, the prize was awarded to the janitor ofthe hall. 

[Associated Press Cablegram]

LONDON, ---, ---. --Bill Nye will sail for America to-morrow in thesteamship Senegambia. On his arrival in America he will at once pay offthe national debt and found a large asylum for American dudes whosemothers are too old to take in washing and support their sons inaffluence. 

The Miner at Home. 

Receiving another notice of assessment on my stock in the Aladdin mine theother day, reminded me that I was still interested in a bottomless holethat was supposed at one time to yield funds instead of absorbing them. The Aladdin claim was located in the spring of '76 by a syndicate ofjournalists, none of whom had ever been openly accused of wealth. If wehad been, we could have proved an alibi. 

We secured a gang of miners to sink on the discovery, consisting of aChinaman named How Long. How Long spoke the Chinese language with greatfluency. Being perfectly familiar with that language, and a little mustyin the trans-Missouri English, he would converse with us in his ownlanguage, sometimes by the hour, courteously overlooking the fact that wedid not reply to him in the same tongue. He would converse in this waytill he ran down, generally, and then he would refrain for a while. 

Finally, How Long signified that he would like to draw his salary. Ofcourse he was ignorant of our ways, and as innocent of any knowledge ofthe intricate details peculiar to a mining syndicate as the child unborn. So he had gone to the president of our syndicate and had been referred tothe superintendent, and he had sent How Long to the auditor, and theauditor had told him to go to the gang boss and get his time, and thenproceed in the proper manner, after which, if his claim turned out to beall right, we would call a meeting of the syndicate and take early actionin relation to it. By this, the reader will readily see that, although wewere not wealthy, we knew how to do business just the same as though wehad been a wealthy corporation. 

How Long attended one of our meetings and at the close of the session madea few remarks. As near as I am able to recall his language, it was verymuch as follows:

"China boy no sabbe you dam slyndicate. You allee same foolee me toomuchee. How Long no chopee big hole in the glound allee day for health. You Melican boy Laddee silver mine all same funny business. Me no likeeslyndicate. Slyndicate heap gone all same woodbine. You sabbe me? How Longmake em slyndicate pay tention. You April foolee me. You makee me tlired. You putee me too much on em slate. Slyndicate no good. Allee timestanemoff China boy. You allee time chin chin. Dlividend allee time heapgone. "

Owing to a strike which then took place in our mine, we found that, inorder to complete our assessment work, we must get in another crew or dothe job ourselves. Owing to scarcity of help and a feeling of antagonismon the part of the laboring classes toward our giant enterprise, a feelingof hostility which naturally exists between labor and capital, we had togo out to the mine ourselves. We had heard of other men who had shoveledin their own mines and were afterward worth millions of dollars, so wetook some bacon and other delicacies and hied us to the Aladdin. 

Buck, our mining expert, went down first. Then he requested us to hoisthim out again. We did so. I have forgotten what his first remark was whenhe got out of the bucket, but that don't make any difference, for Iwouldn't care to use it here anyway. 

[Illustration: I HAVE FORGOTTEN HIS FIRST REMARK. ]

It seems that How Long, owing to his heathenish ignorance of our customsand the unavoidable delay in adjusting his claim for work, labor andservices, had allowed his temper to get the better of him, and he hadplanted a colony of American skunks in the shaft of the Aladdin. 

That is the reason we left the Aladdin mine and no one jumped it. We hadnot done the necessary work in order to hold it, but when we went outthere the following spring we found that no one had jumped it. 

Even the rough, coarse miner, far from civilizing influences and beyondthe reach of social advantages, recognizes the fact that this Little, unostentatious animal plodding along through life in its own modest way, yet wields a wonderful influence over the destinies of man. So the Aladdinmine was not disturbed that summer. 

We paid How Long, and in the following spring had a flattering offer forthe claim if it assayed as well as we said it would, so Buck, our expert, went out to the Aladdin with an assayer and the purchaser. The assay ofthe Aladdin showed up very rich indeed, far above anything that I had everhoped for, and so we made a sale. But we never got the money, for when theassayer got home he casually assayed his apparatus and found that hiswhole outfit had been salted prior to the Aladdin assay. 

I do not think our expert, Buck, would salt an assayer's kit, but he wascharged with it at this time, and he said he would rather lose his tradethan have trouble over it. He would rather suffer wrong than to do wrong, he said, and so the Aladdin came back on our hands. 

It is not a very good mine if a man wants it as a source of revenue, butit makes a mighty good well. The water is cold and clear as crystal. If itstood in Boston, instead of out there in northern Colorado, where youcan't get at it more than three months in the year, it would be worth$150. The great fault of the Aladdin mine is its poverty as a mine, andits isolation as a well. 

An Operatic Entertainment. 

Last week we went up to the Coliseum, at Minneapolis, to hear TheodoreThomas' orchestra, the Wagner trio and Christine Nilsson. The Coliseumis a large rink just out of Minneapolis, on the road between that cityand St. Paul. It can seat 4, 000 people comfortably, but the managementlike to wedge 4, 500 people in there on a warm day, and then watch theperspiration trickle out through the clapboards on the outside. On theclosing afternoon, during the matinee performance, the building wasstruck by lightning and a hole knocked out of the Corinthian duplex thatsurmounts the oblique portcullis on the off side. The reader will see atonce the location of the bolt. 

The lightning struck the flag-staff, ran down the leg of a man who wasrepairing the electric light, took a chew of his tobacco, turned hisboot wrong side out and induced him to change his sock, toyed with achilblain, wrenched out a soft corn and roguishly put it in his ear, then ran down the electric light wire, a part of it filling anengagement in the Coliseum and the balance following the wire to thedepot, where it made double-pointed toothpicks of a pole fifty feethigh. All this was done very briefly. Those who have seen lightning toywith a cottonwood tree, know that this fluid makes a specialty of it atonce and in a brief manner. The lightning in this case, broke the glassin the skylight and deposited the broken fragments on a half dozenparquette chairs, that were empty because the speculators who owned themcouldn't get but $50 apiece, and were waiting for a man to mortgage hisresidence and sell a team. He couldn't make the transfer in time for thematinee, so the seats were vacant when the lightning struck. Theimmediate and previous fluid then shot athwart the auditorium in thedirection of the platform, where it nearly frightened to death a largechorus of children. Women fainted, ticket speculators fell $2 ondesirable seats, and strong men coughed up a clove. The scene beggareddescription. I intended to have said that before, but forgot it. Theodore Thomas drew in a full breath, and Christine Nilsson drew hersalary. Two thousand strong men thought of their wasted lives, and twothousand women felt for their back hair to see if it was still there. Isay, therefore, without successful contradiction, that the scenebeggared description. Chestnuts!

In the evening several people sang, "The Creation. " Nilsson was Gabriel. Gabriel has a beautiful voice cut low in the neck, and sings like ajoyous bobolink in the dew-saturated mead. How's that? Nilsson is proudand haughty in her demeanor, and I had a good notion to send a note upto her, stating that she needn't feel so lofty, and if she could sit upin the peanut gallery where I was and look at herself, with her dresskind of sawed off at the top, she would not be so vain. She wore adiamond necklace and silk skirt The skirt was cut princesse, I think, toharmonize with her salary. As an old neighbor of mine said when hepainted the top board of his fence green, he wanted it "to kind ofcorroborate with his blinds. " He's the same man who went to Washingtonabout the time of the Guiteau trial, and said he was present at the"post mortise" examination. But the funniest thing of all, he said, wasto see Dr. Mary Walker riding one of these "philosophers" around on thestreets. 

[Illustration: MAKING HIMSELF USEFUL. ]

But I am wandering. We were speaking of the Festival. Theodore Thomas iscertainly a great leader. What a pity he is out of politics. He poundedthe air all up fine there, Thursday. I think he has 25 small-sizefiddles, 10 medium-size, and 5 of those big, fat ones that a bald-headedman generally annoys. Then there were a lot of wind instruments, drums, et cetera. There were 600 performers on the stage, counting the chorus, with 4, 500 people in the house and 3, 000 outside yelling it the ticketoffice--also at the top of their voices--and swearing because theycouldn't mortgage their immortal souls and hear Nilsson's coin silvernotes. It was frightful. The building settled twelve inches in thosetwo hours and a half, the electric lights went out nine times forrefreshments, and, on the whole, the entertainment was a grand success. The first time the lights adjourned, an usher came in on the stagethrough a side entrance with a kerosene lamp. I guess he would havestood there and held it for Nilsson to sing by, if 4, 500 people hadn'twith one voice laughed him out into the starless night. You might aswell have tried to light benighted Africa with a white bean. I shallnever forget how proud and buoyant he looked as he sailed in with thatkerosene lamp with a soiled chimney on it, and how hurt and grieved heseemed when he took it and groped his way out, while the Coliseumtrembled with ill-concealed merriment. I use the term "ill-concealedmerriment" with permission of the proprietors, for this season only. 

Dogs and Dog Days. 

I take occasion at this time to ask the American people as one man, whatare we to do to prevent the spread of the most insidious and disagreeabledisease known as hydrophobia? When a fellow-being has to be smothered, aswas the case the other day right here in our fair land, a land wheretyrant foot hath never trod nor bigot forged a chain, we look anxiouslyinto each other's faces and inquire, what shall we do?

Shall we go to France at a great expense and fill our systems full of dogvirus and then return to our glorious land, where we may fork over thatvirus to posterity and thus mix up French hydrophobia with the navy-blueblood of free-born American citizens?

I wot not. 

If I knew that would be my last wot I would not change it. That is justwot it would be. 

But again. 

What shall we do to avoid getting impregnated with the American dog andthen saturating our systems with the alien dog of Paris?

It is a serious matter, and if we do not want to play the Desdemona act wemust take some timely precautions. What must those precautions be?

Did it ever occur to the average thinking mind that we might squeeze alongfor weeks without a dog? Whole families have existed for years after beingdeprived of dogs. Look at the wealthy of our land. They go on comfortablythrough life and die at last with the unanimous consent of their heirsdogless. 

Then why cannot the poor gradually taper off on dogs? They ought not tostop all of a sudden, but they could leave off a dog at a time until atlast they overcame the pernicious habit. 

I saw a man in St. Paul last week who was once poor, and so owned sevenvariegated dogs. He was confirmed in that habit. But he summoned all hiswill-power at last and said he would shake off these dogs and become aman. He did so, and to-day he owns a city lot in St. Paul, and seems to bethe picture of health. 

The trouble about maintaining a dog is that he may go on for years in aquiet, gentlemanly way, winning the regard of all who know him, and thenall of a sudden he may hydrophobe in the most violent manner. Not onlythat, but he may do so while we have company. He may also bite our twinsor the twins of our warmest friends. He may bite us now and we may laughat it, but in five years from now, while we are delivering a humorouslecture, we may burst forth into the audience and bite a beautiful younglady in the parquet or on the ear. 

It is a solemn thing to think of, fellow-citizens, and I appeal to thosewho may read this, as a man who may not live to see a satisfactorypolitical reform--I appeal to you to refrain from the dog. He is purelyornamental. We may love a good dog, but we ought to love our childrenmore. It would be a very, very noble and expensive dog that I would agreeto feed with my only son. 

I know that we gradually become attached to a good dog, but some day hemay become attached to us, and what can be sadder than the sight of aleading citizen drawing a reluctant mad dog down the street by mainstrength and the seat of his pantaloons? (I mean his own, not the dog'spants. This joke will appear in book form in April. The book will be veryreadable, and there will be another joke in it also. Eod tf. )

I have said a good deal about the dog, pro and con, and I am not a rabiddog abolitionist, for no one loves to have his clear-cut features lickedby the warm, wet tongue of a noble dog any more than I do, but rather thansee hydrophobia become a national characteristic or a leading industryhere, I would forego the dog. 

Perhaps all men are that way, however. When they get a little forehandedthey forget that they were once poor, and owned dogs. If so, I do not wishto be unfair. I want to be just, and I believe I am. Let us yield up ourdogs and take the affection that we would otherwise bestow on them on somehuman being. I have tried it and it works well. There are thousands ofpeople in the world, of both sexes, who are pining and starving for thelove and money that we daily shower on the dog. 

If the dog would be kind enough to refrain from introducing his justlycelebrated virus into the person of those only who kiss him on the cold, moist nose, it would be all right; but when a dog goes mad he is veryimpulsive, and he may bestow himself on an obscure man. So I feel a littlenervous myself. 

Christopher Columbus. 

Probably few people have been more successful in the discovering line thanChristopher Columbus. Living as he did in a day when a great many thingswere still in an undiscovered state, the horizon was filled with goldenopportunities for a man possessed of Mr. C. 's pluck and ambition. His lifeat first was filled with rebuffs and disappointments, but at last he grewto be a man of importance in his own profession, and the people who wantedanything discovered would always bring it to him rather than take itelsewhere. 

And yet the life of Columbus was a stormy one. Though he discovered acontinent wherein a millionaire attracts no attention, he himself was verypoor. 

Though he rescued from barbarism a broad and beautiful land in whosemetropolis the theft of less than half a million of dollars is regarded aspetty larceny, Chris himself often went to bed hungry. Is it not singularthat the gray-eyed and gentle Columbus should have added a hemisphere tothe history of our globe, a hemisphere, too, where pie is a common thing, not only on Sunday, but throughout the week, and yet that he should havegone down to his grave pieless!

Such is the history of progress in all ages and in all lines of thoughtand investigation. Such is the meagre reward of the pioneer in new fieldsof action. 

I presume that America to-day has a larger pie area than any other land inwhich the Cockney English language is spoken. Right here where millions ofnative born Americans dwell, many of whom are ashamed of the fact thatthey were born here and which shame is entirely mutual between the Goddessof Liberty and themselves, we have a style of pie that no other land canboast of. 

From the bleak and acid dried apple pie of Maine to the irrigated mincepie of the blue Pacific, all along down the long line of igneous, volcanicand stratified pie, America, the land of the freedom bird with the highinstep to his nose, leads the world. 

Other lands may point with undissembled pride to their polygamy and theircholera, but we reck not. Our polygamy here is still in its infancy andour leprosy has had the disadvantage of a cold, backward spring, but lookat our pie. 

Throughout a long and disastrous war, sometimes referred to as afratricidal war, during which this fair land was drenched in blood, andalso during which aforesaid war numerous frightful blunders were madewhich are fast coming to the surface--through the courtesy of participantsin said war who have patiently waited for those who blundered to die off, and now admit that said participants who are dead did blunder exceedinglythroughout all this long and deadly struggle for the supremacy of libertyand right--as I was about to say when my mind began to wobble, theAmerican pie has shown forth resplendent in the full glare of a noondaysun or beneath the pale-green of the electric light, and she stands forthproudly to-day with her undying loyalty to dyspepsia untrammeled and herdeep and deadly gastric antipathy still fiercely burning in her breast. 

That is the proud history of American pie. Powers, principalities, kingdoms and hand-made dynasties may crumble, but the republican form ofpie does not crumble. Tyranny may totter on its throne, but the Americanpie does not totter. Not a tot. No foreign threat has ever been able tomake our common chicken pie quail. I do not say this because it is smart;I simply say it to fill up. 

But would it not do Columbus good to come among us to-day and look overour free institutions? Would it not please him to ride over this continentwhich has been rescued by his presence of mind from the thraldom ofbarbarism and forked over to the genial and refining influences ofprohibition and pie?

America fills no mean niche in the great history of nations, and if youlisten carefully for a few moments you will hear some American, with hismouth full of pie, make that remark. The American is always frank andperfectly free to state that no other country can approach this one. Weallow no little two-for-a-quarter monarchy to excel us in the size of ourfailures or in the calm and self-poised deliberation with which we erect amonument to the glory of a worthy citizen who is dead, and thereforepolitically useless. 

The careless student of the career of Columbus will find much in theselines that he has not yet seen. He will realize when he comes to read thislittle sketch the pains and the trouble and the research necessary beforesuch an article on the life and work of Columbus could be written, and hewill thank me for it; but it is not for that that I have done it. It is apleasure for me to hunt up and arrange historical and biographical data ina pleasing form for the student and savant. I am only too glad to pleaseand gratify the student and the savant. I was that way myself once and Iknow how to sympathize with them, P. S. --I neglected to state that Columbus was a married man. Still, he didnot murmur or repine. 

Accepting the Laramie Postoffice. 

Office of Daily Boomerang, Laramie City, Wy. , Aug. 9, 1882. 

My Dear General. --I have received by telegraph the news of my nominationby the President and my confirmation by the Senate, as postmaster atLaramie, and wish, to extend my thanks for the same. 

I have ordered an entirely new set of boxes and postoffice outfit, including new corrugated cuspidors for the lady clerks. 

I look upon the appointment, myself, as a great triumph of eternal truthover error and wrong. It is one of the epochs, I may say, in the Nation'sonward march toward political purity and perfection. I do not know when Ihave noticed any stride in the affairs of state, which so thoroughlyimpressed me with its wisdom. 

Now that we are co-workers in the same department, I trust that you willnot feel shy or backward in consulting me at any time relative to mattersconcerning postoffice affairs. Be perfectly frank with me, and feelperfectly free to just bring anything of that kind right to me. Do notfeel reluctant because I may at times appear haughty and indifferent, coldor reserved. Perhaps you do not think I know the difference between ageneral delivery window and a three-m quad, but that is a mistake. 

[Illustration: A NEW OFFICE OUTFIT. ]

My general information is far beyond my years. 

With profoundest regard, and a hearty endorsement of the policy of thePresident and the Senate, whatever it may be, I remain, sincerely yours, Bill Nye, P. M. 

Gen. Frank Hatton, Washington, D. C. 

A Journalistic Tenderfoot. 

Most everyone who has tried the publication of a newspaper will call tomind as he reads this item, a similar experience, though, perhaps, not sopronounced and protuberant. 

Early one summer morning a gawky young tenderfoot, both as to the West andthe details of journalism, came into the office and asked me for a job ascorrespondent to write up the mines in North Park. He wore his hairlongish and tried to make it curl. The result was a greasy coat collar andthe general _tout ensemble_ of the genus "smart Aleck. " He had alsoclothed himself in the extravagant clothes of the dime novel scout andbeautiful girl-rescuer of the Indian country. He had been driven west by awild desire to hunt the flagrant Sioux warrior, and do a general Wild Billbusiness; hoping, no doubt, before the season closed, to rescue enoughbeautiful captive maidens to get up a young Vassar College in Wyoming orMontana. 

I told him that we did not care for a mining correspondent who did notknow a piece of blossom rock from a geranium. I knew it took a man a goodmany years to gain knowledge enough to know where to sink a prospect shafteven, and as to passing opinions on a vein, it would seem almost wickedand sacriligious to send a man out there among those old grizzly minerswho had spent their lives in bitter experience, unless the young man couldreadily distinguish the points of difference between a chunk of freemilling quartz and a fragment of bologna sausage. 

He still thought he could write us letters that would do the paper someeternal good, and though I told him, as he wrung my hand and left, torefrain from writing or doing any work for us, he wrote a letter before hehad reached the home station on the stage road, or at least sent us a longletter from there. It might have been written before he started, however. 

The letter was of the "we-have-went" and "I-have-never-saw" variety, andhe spelt curiosity "qrossity. " He worked hard to get the word into hisalleged letter, and then assassinated it. 

Well, we paid no attention whatever to the letter, but meantime he gotinto the mines, and the way he dead-headed feed and sour mash, on thestrength of his relations with the press, made the older miners weep. 

Buck Bramel got a little worried and wrote to me about it. He said thatour soft-eyed mining savant was getting us a good many subscribers, andwriting up every little gopher hole in North Park, and living onCincinnati quail, as we miners call bacon; but he said that none of thesefine, blooming letters, regarding the assays on "The Weasel Asleep, " "ThePauper's Dream, " "The Mary Ellen" and "The Over Draft, " ever seemed tocrop out in the paper. 

Why was it?

I wrote back that the white-eyed pelican from the buckwheat-enamelledplains of Arkansas had not remitted, was not employed by us, and that Iwould write and publish a little card of introduction for the biliouslitterateur that would make people take in their domestic animals, andlock up their front fences and garden fountains. 

In the meantime they sent him up the gulch to find some "float. " He hadwandered away from camp thirty miles before he remembered that he didn'tknow what float looked like. Then he thought he would go back and inquire. He got lost while in a dark brown study and drifted into the bosom of theunknowable. He didn't miss the trail until a perpendicular wall of theRocky Mountains, about 900 feet high, rose up and hit him athwart thenose. 

[Illustration: COMMUNING WITH NATURE. ]

He communed with nature and the coyotes one night and had a pretty toughtime of it. He froze his nose partially off, and the coyotes came andgnawed his little dimpled toes. He passed a wretched night, and wasgreatly annoyed by the cold, which at that elevation sends the mercurytoward zero all through the summer nights. 

Of course he pulled the zodiac partially over him, and tried to button hisalapaca duster a little closer, but his sleep was troubled by thesociability of the coyotes and the midnight twitter of the mountain lion. He ate moss agates rare and spruce gum for breakfast. When he got to thecamp he looked like a forty-day starvationist hunting for a job. 

They asked him if he found any float, and he said he didn't find a blameddrop of water, say nothing about float, and then they all laughed a merrylaugh, and said that if he showed up at daylight the next morning withinthe limits of the park, the orders were to burn him at the stake. 

The next morning neither he nor the best bay mule on the Troublesome wasto be seen with naked eye. After that we heard of him in the San Juancountry. 

He had lacerated the finer feelings of the miners down there, and hadviolated the etiquette of San Juan, so they kicked a flour barrel out fromunder him one day when he was looking the other way, and being a poortight-rope performer, he got tangled up with a piece of inch rope in sucha way that he died of his injuries. 

The Amateur Carpenter. 

In my opinion every professional man should keep a chest of carpenters'tools in his barn or shop, and busy himself at odd hours with them inconstructing the varied articles that are always needed about the house. There is a great deal of pleasure in feeling your own independence ofother trades, and more especially of the carpenter. Every now and thenyour wife will want a bracket put up in some corner or other, and withyour new, bright saw and glittering hammer you can put up one upon whichshe can hang a cast-iron horse-blanket lambrequin, with inflexible waterlilies sewed in it. 

A man will, if he tries, readily learn to do a great many such littlethings and his wife will brag on him to other ladies, and they will makeinvidious comparisons between their husbands who can't do anything of thatkind whatever, and you who are "so handy. "

Firstly, you buy a set of amateur carpenter tools. You do not need to saythat you are an amateur. The dealer will find that out when you ask himfor an easy-running broad-ax or a green-gage plumb line. He will sell youa set of amateur's tools that will be made of old sheet-iron with basswoodhandles, and the saws will double up like a piece of stovepipe. 

After you have nailed a board on the fence successfully, you will verynaturally desire to do something much better, more difficult. You willprobable try to erect a parlor table or rustic settee. 

I made a very handsome bracket last week, and I was naturally proud of it. In fastening it together, if I hadn't inadvertently nailed it to the barnfloor, I guess I could have used it very well, but in tearing it loosefrom the barn, so that the two could be used separately, I ruined abracket that was intended to serve as the base, as it were, of alambrequin which cost nine dollars, aside from the time expended on it. 

During the month of March I built an ice-chest for this summer. It was nothandsome, but it was roomy, and would be very nice for the season of 1886, I thought. It worked pretty well through March and April, but as theweather begins to warm up that ice-chest is about the warmest place aroundthe house. There is actually a glow of heat around that ice-chest that Idon't notice elsewhere. I've shown it to several personal friends. Theyseem to think it is not built tightly enough for an ice-chest. My brotherlooked at it yesterday, and said that his idea of an ice-chest was that itought to be tight enough at least to hold the larger chunks of ice so thatthey would not escape through the pores of the ice-box. He says he neverbuilt one, but that it stood to reason that a refrigerator like that oughtto be constructed so that it would keep the cows out of it. You don't wantto have a refrigerator that the cattle can get through the cracks of andeat up your strawberries on ice, he says. 

A neighbor of mine who once built a hen resort of laths, and now wears athick thumb-nail that looks like a Brazil nut as a memento of that pulletcorral, says my ice-chest is all right enough, only that it is not suitedto this climate. He thinks that along Behring's Strait, during theholidays, my ice-chest would work like a charm. And even here, he thought, if I could keep the fever out of my chest there would be less pain. 

I have made several other little articles of _vertu_ this spring, to theconstruction of which I have contributed a good deal of time and twofinger nails. I have also sawed into my leg two or three times. The leg, of course, will get well, but the pantaloons will not. Parties wishing tomeet me in my studio during the morning hour will turn into the alleybetween Eighth and Ninth streets, enter the third stable door on the left, pass around behind my Gothic horse, and give the countersign and threekicks on the door in an ordinary tone of voice. 

The Average Hen. 

I am convinced that there is great economy in keeping hens if we havesufficient room for them and a thorough knowledge of how to manage thefowl property. But to the professional man, who is not familiar with thehabits of the hen, and whose mind does not naturally and instinctivelyturn henward, I would say: Shun her as you would the deadly upas tree ofPiscataquis county, Me. 

Nature has endowed the hen with but a limited amount of brain-force. Anyone will notice that if he will compare the skull of the average self-madehen with that of Daniel Webster, taking careful measurements directly overthe top from one ear to the other, the well-informed brain student will atonce notice a great falling-off in the region of reverence and an abnormalbulging out in the location of alimentiveness. 

Now take your tape-measure and, beginning at memory, pass carefully overthe occiputal bone to the base of the brain in the region of love of homeand offspring and you will see that, while the hen suffers much incomparison with the statement in the relative size of sublimity, reflection, spirituality, time, tune, etc. , when it comes to love of homeand offspring she shines forth with great splendor. 

The hen does not care for the sublime in nature. Neither does she care formusic. Music hath no charms to soften her tough old breast. But she lovesher home and her country. I have sought to promote the interests of thehen to some extent, but I have not been a marked success in that line. 

I can write a poem in fifteen minutes. I always could dash off a poemwhenever I wanted to, and a very good poem, too, for a dashed poem. Icould write a speech for a friend in congress--a speech that would beprinted in the Congressional Record and go all over the United States andbe read by no one. I could enter the field of letters anywhere and attractattention, but when it comes to setting a hen I feel that I am not worthy. I never feel my utter unworthiness as I do in the presence of a settinghen. 

When the adult hen in my presence expresses a desire to set I excusemyself and go away. That is the supreme moment when a hen desires to bealone. That is no time for me to introduce my shallow levity, I never doit is after death that I most fully appreciate the hen. When she hasbeen cut down early in life and fried I respect her. No one can look uponthe still features of a young hen overtaken by death in life's youngmorning, snuffed out as it were, like an old tin lantern in a gale ofwind, without being visibly affected. 

But it is not the hen who desires to set for the purpose of getting out anearly edition of spring chickens that I am averse to. It is the aged hen, who is in her dotage, and whose eggs, also, are in their second childhood. Upon this hen I shower my anathemas. Overlooked by the pruning hook oftime, shallow in her remarks, and a wall-flower in society, she depositsher quota of eggs in the catnip conservatory, far from the haunts of men, and then in August, when eggs are extremely low and her collection of novalue to any one but the antiquarian, she proudly calls attention to hersummer's work. 

This hen does not win the general confidence. Shunned by good societyduring life, her death is only regretted by those who are called upon toassist at her obsequies. Selfish through life, her death is regarded as acalamity by those alone who are expected to eat her. 

And what has such a hen to look back upon in her closing hours? A longlife, perhaps, for longevity is one of the characteristics of this classof hens; but of what has that life been productive? How many golden hourshas she frittered away hovering over a porcelain door-knob trying to hatchout a litter of Queen Anne cottages. How many nights has she passed insolitude on her lonely nest, with a heart filled with bitterness towardall mankind, hoping on against hope that in the fall she would come offthe nest with a cunning little brick block, perhaps. 

[Illustration: THE RESULT OF PATIENCE. ]

Such is the history of the aimless hen. While others were at work shestood around with her hands in her pockets and criticised the policy ofthose who labored, and when the summer waned she came forth with nothingbut regret to wander listlessly about and freeze off some more of her feetduring the winter. For such a hen death can have no terrors. 

Woodtick William's Story. 

We had about as ornery and triflin' a crop of kids in Calaveras county, thirty years ago, as you could gather in with a fine-tooth comb and abrass band in fourteen States. For ways that was kittensome they weremoderately active and abnormally protuberant. That was the prevailingstyle of Calaveras kid, when Mr. George W. Mulqueen come there and wantedto engage the school at the old camp, where I hung up in the days when thecountry was new and the murmur of the six-shooter was heard in the land. 

[Illustration: WINNING THEIR YOUNG LOVE. ]

"George W. Mulqueen was a slender young party from the effete East, withconscientious scruples and a hectic flush. Both of these was agin him fora promoter of school discipline and square root. He had a heap ofinformation and big sorrowful eyes. 

"So fur as I was concerned, I didn't feel like swearing around George orusing any language that would sound irrelevant in a ladies' boodore; butas for the kids of the school, they didn't care a blamed cent. They justhollered and whooped like a passle of Sioux. 

"They didn't seem to respect literary attainments or expensive knowledge. They just simply seemed to respect the genius that come to that country towin their young love with a long-handled shovel and a blood-shot tone ofvoice. That's what seemed to catch the Calaveras kids in the early days. 

"George had weak lungs, and they kept to work at him till they drove himinto a mountain fever, and finally into a metallic sarcophagus. 

"Along about the holidays the sun went down on George W. Mulqueen's life, just as the eternal sunlight lit up the dewy eyes. You will pardon mymanner, Nye, but it seemed to me just as if George had climbed up to thetop of Mount Cavalry, or wherever it was, with that whole school on hisback, and had to give up at last. 

"It seemed kind of tough to me, and I couldn't help blamin' it onto theschool some, for there was a half a dozen big snoozers that didn't go toschool to learn, but just to raise Ned and turn up Jack. 

"Well, they killed him, anyhow, and that settled it. 

"The school run kind of wild till Feboowary, and then a husky youngtenderfoot, with a fist like a mule's foot in full bloom, made anapplication for the place, and allowed he thought he could maintaindiscipline if they'd give him a chance. Well, they ast him when he wantedto take his place as tutor, and he reckoned he could begin to tute aboutMonday follering. 

"Sunday afternoon he went up to the school-house to look over the ground, and to arrange a plan for an active Injin campaign agin the hostilehoodlums of Calaveras. 

"Monday he sailed in about 9 A. M. With his grip-sack, and begun thedischarge of his juties. 

"He brought in a bunch of mountain-willers, and, after driving a bigrailroad-spike into the door-casing, over the latch, he said the senateand house would sit with closed doors during the morning session. Severallarge, white-eyed holy terrors gazed at him in a kind of dumb, inquiringtone of voice, but he didn't say much. He seemed considerably reserved asto the plan of the campaign. The new teacher then unlocked hisalligator-skin grip, and took out a Bible and a new self-cocking weeponthat had an automatic dingus for throwing out the empty shells. It was oneof the bull-dog variety, and had the laugh of a joyous child. 

"He read a short passage from the Scriptures, and then pulled off his coatand hung it on a nail. Then he made a few extemporaneous remarks, afterwhich he salivated the palm of his right hand, took the self-cockingsongster in his left, and proceeded to wear out the gads over the variedprotuberances of his pupils. 

"People passing by thought they must be beating carpets in theschool-house. He pointed the gun at his charge with his left andmanipulated the gad with his right duke. One large, overgrown Missouriantried to crawl out of the winder, but, after he had looked down the barrelof the shooter a moment, he changed his mind. He seemed to realize that itwould be a violation of the rules of the school, so he came back and satdown. 

"After he wore out the foliage, Bill, he pulled the spike out of thatdoor, put on his coat and went away. He never was seen there again. Hedidn't ask for any salary, but just walked off quietly, and that summer weaccidently heard that he was George W. Mulqueen's brother. "

In Washington. 

I have just returned from a polite and recherche party here. Washington isthe hot-bed of gayety, and general headquarters for the recherchebusiness. It would be hard to find a bontonger aggregation than the one Iwas just at, to use the words of a gentleman who was there, and who askedme if I wrote "The Heathen Chinee. "

He was a very talented man, with a broad sweep of skull and a vagueyearning for something more tangible--to drink. He was in Washington, hesaid, in the interests of Mingo county. I forgot to ask him where Mingocounty might be. He took a great interest in me, and talked with me longafter he really had anything to say. He was one of those fluentconversationalists frequently met with in society. He used one of theseweb-perfecting talkers--the kind that can be fed with raw Roman punch, and that will turn out punctuated talk in links, like varnished sausages. Being a poor talker myself, and rather more fluent as a listener, I didnot interrupt him. 

He said that he was sorry to notice how young girls and their parents cameto Washington as they would to a matrimonial market. 

I was sorry also to hear it. It pained me to know that young ladies shouldallow themselves to be bamboozled into matrimony. Why was it, I asked, that matrimony should ever single out the young and fair?

"Ah, " said he, "it is indeed rough!"

He then breathed a sigh that shook the foilage of the speckled geraniumnear by, and killed an artificial caterpillar that hung on its branches. 

"Matrimony is all right, " said he, "if properly brought about. It breaksmy heart, though, to notice how Washington is used as a matrimonialmarket. It seems to me almost as if these here young ladies were broughthere like slaves and exposed for sale. " I had noticed that they weresomewhat exposed, but I did not know that they were for sale. I asked himif the waists of party dresses had always been so sadly in the minority, and he said they had. 

I danced with a beautiful young lady whose trail had evidently caught in adoorway. She hadn't noticed it till she had walked out partially throughher costume. 

I do not think a lady ought to give too much thought to her apparel;neither should she feel too much above her clothes. I say this in thekindest spirit, because I believe that man should be a friend to woman. Nofamily circle is complete without a woman. She is like a glad landscape tothe weary eye. Individually and collectively, woman is a great adjunct ofcivilization and progress. The electric light is a good thing, but howpale and feeble it looks by the light of a good woman's eyes. Thetelephone is a great invention. It is a good thing to talk at, and murmurinto and deposit profanity in; but to take up a conversation, and keep itup, and follow a man out through the front door with it, the telephone hasstill much to learn from woman. 

It is said that our government officials are not sufficiently paid; and Ipresume that is the case, so it became necessary to economize in everyway; but, why should wives concentrate all their economy on the waist of adress? When chest protectors are so cheap as they now are. I hate to seepeople suffer, and there is more real suffering, more privation and moredestitution, pervading the Washington scapula and clavicle this winterthan I ever saw before. 

But I do not hope to change this custom, though I spoke to several ladiesabout it, and asked them to think it over. I do not think they will. Itseems almost wicked to cut off the best part of a dress and put it at theother end of the skirt, to be trodden under feet of men, as I may say. They smiled good humoredly at me as I tried to impress my views upon them, but should I go there again next season and mingle in the mad whirl ofWashington, where these fair women are also mingling in said mad whirl, Ipresume that I will find them clothed in the same gaslight waist, withtrimmings of real vertebrae down the back. 

Still, what does a man know about the proper costume of a woman? He knowsnothing whatever. He is in many ways a little inconsistent. Why does a manfrown on a certain costume for his wife, and admire it on the first womanhe meets? Why does he fight shy of religion and Christianity and talk veryfreely about the church, but get mad if his wife is an infidel?

Crops around Washington are looking well. Winter wheat, crocusses andindefinite postponements were never in a more thrifty condition. Quite anumber of people are here who are waiting to be confirmed. Judging fromtheir habits, they are lingering around here in order to become confirmeddrunkards. 

I leave here to-morrow with a large, wet towel in my plug hat. Perhaps Ishould have said nothing on this dress reform question while my hat isfitting me so immediately. It is seldom that I step aside from the beatenpath of rectitude, but last evening, on the way home, it seemed to me thatI didn't do much else but step aside. At these parties no charge is madefor punch. It is perfectly free. I asked a colored man who was standingnear the punch bowl, and who replenished it ever and anon, what the damagewas, and he drew himself up to his full height. 

Possibly I did wrong, but I hate to be a burden on anyone. It seemed oddto me to go to a first-class dance and find the supper and the band andthe rum all paid for. It must cost a good deal of money to run thisgovernment. 

My Experience as an Agriculturist. 

During the past season I was considerably interested in agriculture. I metwith some success, but not enough to madden me with joy. It takes a gooddeal of success to unscrew my reason and make it totter on its throne. I've had trouble with my liver, and various other abnormal conditions ofthe vital organs, but old reason sits there on his or her throne, as thecase may be, through it all. 

Agriculture has a charm about it which I can not adequately describe. Every product of the farm is furnished by nature with something that lovesit, so that it will never be neglected. The grain crop is loved by theweevil, the Hessian fly, and the chinch bug; the watermelon, the squashand the cucumber are loved by the squash bug; the potato is loved by thepotato bug; the sweet corn is loved by the ant, thou sluggard; the tomatois loved by the cut-worm; the plum is loved by the curculio, and so forth, and so forth, so that no plant that grows need be a wall-flower. [Earlyblooming and extremely dwarf joke for the table. Plant as soon as there isno danger of frosts, in drills four inches apart. When ripe, pull it, andeat raw with vinegar. The red ants may be added to taste. ]

Well, I began early to spade up my angle-worms and other pets, to see ifthey had withstood the severe winter. I found they had. They wereunusually bright and cheerful. The potato bugs were a little sluggish atfirst, but as the spring opened and the ground warmed up they pitchedright in, and did first-rate. Every one of my bugs in May lookedsplendidly. I was most worried about my cut-worms. Away along in April Ihad not seen a cutworm, and I began to fear they had suffered, and perhapsperished, in the extreme cold of the previous winter. 

One morning late in the month, however, I saw a cut-worm come out frombehind a cabbage stump and take off his ear muff. He was a little stiff inthe joints, but he had not lost hope. I saw at once now was the time toassist him if I had a spark of humanity left. I searched every work Icould find on agriculture to find out what it was that farmers fed theirblamed cut-worms, but all scientists seemed to be silent. I read theagricultural reports, the dictionary, and the encyclopedia, but theydidn't throw any light on the subject. I got wild. I feared that I hadbrought but one cut-worm through the winter, and I was liable to lose himunless I could find out what to feed him. I asked some of my neighbors, but they spoke jeeringly and sarcastically. I know now how it was. Alltheir cut-worms had frozen down last winter, and they couldn't bear to seeme get ahead. 

[Illustration: THEY SPOKE JEERINGLY. ]

All at once, an idea struck me. I haven't recovered from the concussionyet. It was this: the worm had wintered under a cabbage stalk; no doubt hewas fond of the beverage. I acted upon this thought and bought him twodozen red cabbage plants, at fifty cents a dozen. I had hit it the firstpop. He was passionately fond of these plants, and would eat three in onenight. He also had several matinees and sauerkraut lawn festivals for hisfriends, and in a week I bought three dozen more cabbage plants. By thistime I had collected a large group of common scrub cut-worms, earlySwedish cut-worms, dwarf Hubbard cut-worms, and short-horn cut-worms, alldoing well, but still, I thought, a little hide-bound and bilious. Theyacted languid and listless. As my squash bugs, currant worms, potato bugs, etc. , were all doing well without care, I devoted myself almostexclusively to my cut-worms. They were all strong and well, but theyseemed melancholy with nothing to eat, day after day, but cabbages. 

I therefore bought five dozen tomato plants that were tender and large. These I fed to the cut-worms at the rate of eight or ten in one night. Ina week the cut-worms had thrown off that air of _ennui_ and languor that Ihad I formerly noticed, and were gay and light-hearted. I got them somemore tomato plants, and then some more cabbage for change. On the whole Iwas as proud as any young farmer who has made a success of anything, One morning I noticed that a cabbage plant was left standing unchanged. The next day it was still there. I was thunderstruck. I dug into theground. My cut-worms were gone. I spaded up the whole patch, but therewasn't one. Just as I had become attached to them, and they had learned tolook forward each day to my coming, when they would almost come up and eata tomato-plant out of my hand, some one had robbed me of them. I wasalmost wild with despair and grief. Suddenly something tumbled over myfoot. It was mostly stomach, but it had feet on each corner. A neighborsaid it was a warty toad. He had eaten up my summer's work! He hadswallowed my cunning little cut-worms. I tell you, gentle reader, unlesssome way is provided, whereby this warty toad scourge can be wiped out, Ifor one shall relinquish the joys of agricultural pursuits. When a commontoad, with a sallow complexion and no intellect, can swallow up mysummer's work, it is time to pause. 

A New Autograph Album. 

This autograph business is getting to be a little bit tedious. It is allone-sided. I want to get even some how, on some one. If I can't come backat the autograph fiend himself, perhaps I might make some other fellowcreature unhappy. That would take my mind off the woes that are inflictedby the man who is making a collection of the autographs of "prominentmen, " and who sends a printed circular formally demanding your autograph, as the tax collector would demand your tax. 

John Comstock, the President of the First National Bank, of Hudson, theother day suggested an idea. I gave him an autograph copy of my last greatwork, and he said: "Now, I'm a man of business. You gave me yourautograph, I give you mine in return. That's what we call business. " Hethen signed a brand new $5 national bank note, the cashier did ditto, andthe two autographs were turned over to me. 

Now, how would it do to make a collection of the signatures of thepresidents and cashiers of national banks of the United States in theabove manner? An album containing the autographs of these bank officialswould not only be a handsome heirloom to fork over to posterity, but itwould possess intrinsic value. In pursuance of this idea, I have beenconsidering the advisability of issuing the following letter:

To the Presidents and Cashiers of the National Banks of the United States. 

Gentlemen--I am now engaged in making a collection of the autographs ofthe presidents and cashiers of national banks throughout the Union, and tomake the collection uniform, I have decided to ask for autographs writtenat the foot of the national currency bank note of the denomination of $5. I am not sectarian in my religious views, and I only suggest thisdenomination for the sake of uniformity throughout the album. 

Card collections, cat albums and so forth, may please others, but I preferto make a collection that shall show future ages who it was that built upour finances, and furnished the sinews of war. Some may look upon thismove as a mercenary one, but with me it is a passion. It is not simply afreak, it is a desire of my heart. 

In return I would be glad to give my own autograph, either by itself orattached to some little gem of thought which might occur to my mind at thetime. 

I have always taken a great interest in the currency of the country. Sofar as possible I have made it a study. I have watched its growth, andnoted with some regret its natural reserve. I may say that, consideringmeagre opportunities and isolated advantages afforded me, no one is morefamiliar with the habits of our national currency than I am. Yet, at timesmy laboratory has not been so abundantly supplied with specimens as Icould have wished. This has been my chief drawback. 

I began a collection of railroad passes some time ago, intending to filethem away and pass the collection down through the dim vista of comingyears, but in a rash moment I took a trip of several thousand miles, andthose passes were taken up. 

I desire, in conclusion, gentlemen, to call your attention to the factthat I have always been your friend and champion. I have never robbed thebank of a personal friend, and if I held your autographs I should deem youmy personal friends, and feel in honor bound to discourage any movementlooking toward an unjust appropriation of the funds of your bank. Theautographs of yourselves in my possession, and my own in your hands, wouldbe regarded as a tacit agreement on my part never to rob your bank. Iwould even be willing to enter into a contract with you not to break intoyour vaults, if you insist upon it. I would thus be compelled to confinemyself to the stage coaches and railroad trains in a great measure, but Iam getting now so I like to spend my evenings at home, anyhow, and if I dowell this year, I shall sell my burglars' tools and give myself up to theauthorities. 

You will understand, gentlemen, the delicate nature of this request, Itrust, and not misconstrue my motives. My intentions are perfectlyhonorable, and my idea in doing this is, I may say, to supply a long feltwant. 

Hoping that what I have said will meet with your approval and heartycooperation, and that our very friendly business relations, as they haveexisted in the past, may continue through the years to come, and that yourbank may wallow in success till the cows come home, or words to thateffect, I beg leave to subscribe myself, yours in favor of one country, one flag and one bank account. 

A Resign. 

Postoffice Divan, Laramie City, W. T. , Oct. 1, 1883. 

To the President of the United States:

Sir. --I beg leave at this time to officially tender my resignation aspostmaster at this place, and in due form to deliver the great seal andthe key to the front door of the office. The safe combination is set onthe numbers 33, 66 and 99, though I do not remember at this moment whichcomes first, or how many times you revolve the knob, or which directionyou should turn it at first in order to make it operate. 

There is some mining stock in my private drawer in the safe, which I havenot yet removed. This stock you may have, if you desire it. It is aluxury, but you may have it. I have decided to keep a horse instead ofthis mining stock. The horse may not be so pretty, but it will cost lessto keep him. 

You will find the postal cards that have not been used under thedistributing table, and the coal down in the cellar. If the stove drawstoo hard, close the damper in the pipe and shut the general deliverywindow. 

Looking over my stormy and eventful administration as postmaster here, Ifind abundant cause for thanksgiving. At the time I entered upon theduties of my office the department was not yet on a paying basis. It wasnot even self-sustaining. Since that time, with the active co-operation ofthe chief executive and the heads of the department, I have been able tomake our postal system a paying one, and on top of that I am now able toreduce the tariff on average-sized letters from three cents to two. Imight add that this is rather too too, but I will not say anything thatmight seem undignified in an official resignation which is to become amatter of history. 

Through all the vicissitudes of a tempestuous term of office I have safelypassed. I am able to turn over the office to-day in a highly improvedcondition, and to present a purified and renovated institution to mysuccessor. 

Acting under the advice of Gen. Hatton, a year ago, I removed the featherbed with which my predecessor, Deacon Hayford, had bolstered up hisadministration by stuffing the window, and substituted glass. Findingnothing in the book of instructions to postmasters which made the featherbed a part of my official duties, I filed it away in an obscure place andburned it in effigy, also in the gloaming. This act maddened mypredecessor to such a degree, that he then and there became a candidatefor justice of the peace on the Democratic ticket. The Democratic partywas able, however, with what aid it secured from the Republicans, to plowthe old man under to a great degree. 

[Illustration: STRICT ATTENTION TO BUSINESS. ]

It was not long after I had taken my official oath before an era ofunexampled prosperity opened for the American people. The price of beefrose to a remarkable altitude, and other vegetables commanded a goodfigure and a ready market. We then began to make active preparations forthe introduction of the strawberry-roan two-cent stamps and theblack-and-tan postal note. One reform has crowded upon the heels ofanother, until the country is to-day upon the foam-crested wave ofpermanent prosperity. 

Mr. President, I cannot close this letter without thanking yourself andthe heads of departments at Washington for your active, cheery and promptcooperation in these matters. You can do as you see fit, of course, aboutincorporating this idea into your Thanksgiving proclamation, but restassured it would not be ill-timed or inopportune. It is not alone a creditto myself, It reflects credit upon the administration also. 

I need not say that I herewith transmit my resignation with great sorrowand genuine regret. We have toiled on together month after month, askingfor no reward except the innate consciousness of rectitude and the salaryas fixed by law. Now we are to separate. Here the roads seem to fork, asit were, and you and I, and the cabinet, must leave each other at thispoint. 

You will find the key under the door-mat, and you had better turn the catout at night when you close the office. If she does not go readily, youcan make it clearer to her mind by throwing the cancelling stamp at her. 

If Deacon Hayford does not pay up his box-rent, you might as well put hismail in the general delivery, and when Bob Head gets drunk and insists ona letter from one of his wives every day in the week, you can salute himthrough the box delivery with an old Queen Anne tomahawk, which you willfind near the Etruscan water-pail. This will not in any manner surpriseeither of these parties. 

Tears are unavailing. I once more become a private citizen, clothed onlywith the right to read such postal cards as may be addressed to mepersonally, and to curse the inefficiency of the postoffice department. Ibelieve the voting class to be divided into two parties, viz: Those whoare in the postal service, and those who are mad because they cannotreceive a registered letter every fifteen minutes of each day, includingSunday. 

Mr. President, as an official of this Government I now retire. My term ofoffice would not expire until 1886. I must, therefore, beg pardon for myeccentricity in resigning. It will be best, perhaps, to keep theheart-breaking news from the ears of European powers until the dangers ofa financial panic are fully past. Then hurl it broadcast with a sickeningthud. 

My Mine. 

I have decided to sacrifice another valuable piece of mining property thisspring. It would not be sold if I had the necessary capital to develop it. It is a good mine, for I located it myself. I remember well the day Iclimbed up on the ridge-pole of the universe and nailed my location noticeto the eaves of the sky. 

It was in August that I discovered the Vanderbilt claim in a snow-storm. It cropped out apparently a little southeast of a point where the arc ofthe orbit of Venus bisects the milky way, and ran due east eighty chains, three links and a swivel, thence south fifteen paces and a half to a bluespot in the sky, thence proceeding west eighty chains, three links ofsausage and a half to a fixed star, thence north across the lead to placeof beginning. 

The Vanderbilt set out to be a carbonate deposit, but changed its mind. Isent a piece of the cropping to a man over in Salt Lake, who is a goodassayer and quite a scientist, if he would brace up and avoid humor. Hisassay read as follows to-wit:

Salt Lake City, U. T. , August 25, 1877. 

Mr. Bill Nye:--Your specimen of ore No. 35832, current series, has beensubmitted to assay and shows the following result:

 Metal. Ounces. Value per ton. 

 Gold -- -- Silver -- -- Railroad iron 1 -- Pyrites of poverty 9 -- Parasites of disappointment 90 --

McVicker, Assayer. 

Note. --I also find that the formation is igneous, prehistoric anderroneous. If I were you I would sink a prospect shaft below the verticalslide where the old red brimstone and preadamite slag cross-cut themalachite and intersect the schist. I think that would be schist about asgood as anything you could do. Then send me specimens with $2 for assayand we shall see what we shall see. 

Well, I didn't know he was "an humorist, " you see, so I went to work onthe Vanderbilt to try and do what Mac. Said. I sank a shaft and everythingelse I could get hold of on that claim. It was so high that we had tocarry water up there to drink when we began and before fall we had strucka vein of the richest water you ever saw. We had more water in that minethan the regular army could use. 

When we got down sixty feet I sent some pieces of the pay streak to theassayer again. This time he wrote me quite a letter, and at the same timeinclosed the certificate of assay. 

Salt Lake City, U. T. , October 3, 1877. 

Mr. Bill Nye:--Your specimen of ore No. 36132, current series, has beensubmitted to assay and shows the following result:

 Metal. Ounces. Value per ton. Gold -- -- Silver -- -- Stove polish trace . 01 Old gray whetstone trace . 01 Bromide of axle grease stain -- Copperas trace 5c worth Blue vitrol trace 5c worth

McVicker, Assayer. 

In the letter he said there was, no doubt, something in the claim if Icould get the true contact with calcimine walls denoting a true fissure. He thought I ought to run a drift. I told him I had already run adrift. 

Then he said to stope out my stove polish ore and sell it for enough to goon with the development. I tried that, but capital seemed coy. Others hadbeen there before me and capital bade me soak my head and said otherthings which grated harshly on my sensitive nature. 

The Vanderbilt mine, with all its dips, spurs, angles, variations, veins, sinuosities, rights, titles, franchises, prerogatives and assessments isnow for sale. I sell it in order to raise the necessary funds for thedevelopment of the Governor of North Carolina. I had so much trouble withwater in the Vanderbilt, that I named the new claim the Governor of NorthCarolina, because he was always dry. 

Mush and Melody. 

Lately I have been giving a good deal of attention to hygiene--in otherpeople. The gentle reader will notice that, as a rule, the man who givesthe most time and thought to this subject is an invalid himself; just asthe young theological student devotes his first sermon to the care ofchildren, and the ward politician talks the smoothest on the subject ofhow and when to plant ruta-bagas or wean a calf from the parent stem. 

Having been thrown into the society of physicians a great deal the pasttwo years, mostly in the role of patient, I have given some study to thehuman form; its structure and idiosyncracies, as it were. Perhaps few menin the same length of time have successfully acquired a larger or moreselect repertoire of choice diseases than I have. I do not say thisboastfully. I simply desire to call the attention of our growing youth tothe glorious possibilities that await the ambitious and enterprising inthis line. 

Starting out as a poor boy, with few advantages in the way of disease, Ihave resolutely carved my way up to the dizzy heights of fame as a chronicinvalid and drug-soaked relic of other days. I inherited no diseasewhatever. My ancestors were poor and healthy. They bequeathed me no snuglittle nucleus of fashionable malaria such as other boys had. I wasobliged to acquire it myself. Yet I was not discouraged. The results haveshown that disease is not alone the heritage of the wealthy and the great. The poorest of us may become eminent invalids if we will only go at it inthe right way. But I started out to say something on the subject ofhealth, for there are still many common people who would rather be healthyand unknown than obtain distinction with some dazzling new disease. 

Noticing many years ago that imperfect mastication and dyspepsia walkedhand in hand, so to speak, Mr. Gladstone adopted in his family a regularmastication scale; for instance, thirty-two bites for steak, twenty-twofor fish, and so forth. Now I take this idea and improve upon it. Twostatesmen can always act better in concert if they will do so. 

With Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the laws of health and my own musicalgenius, I have hit on a way to make eating not only a duty, but apleasure. Eating is too frequently irksome. There is nothing about it tomake it attractive. 

What we need is a union of mush and melody, if I may be allowed thatexpression. Mr. Gladstone has given us the graduated scale, so that weknow just what metre a bill of fare goes in as quick as we look at it. Inthis way the day is not far distant when music and mastication will marchdown through the dim vista of years together. 

The Baked Bean Chant, the Vermicelli Waltz, the Mush and Milk March, thesad and touchful Pumpkin Pie Refrain, the gay and rollicking Oxtail SoupGallop, and the melting Ice Cream Serenade will yet be common musicalnames. 

Taking different classes of food, I have set them to music in such a waythat the meal, for instance, may open with a Soup Overture, to be followedby a Roast Beef March in C, and so on, closing with a kind of Mince Pie LaSomnambula pianissimo in G. Space, of course, forbids an extendeddescription of this idea as I propose to carry it out, but the conceptionis certainly grand. Let us picture the jaws of a whole family moving inexact time to a Strauss waltz on the silent remains of the late lamentedhen, and we see at once how much real pleasure may be added to the processof mastication. 

[Illustration]

The Blase Young Man. 

I have just formed the acquaintance of a _blase_ young man. I have been onan extended trip with him. He is about twenty-two years old, but he isalready weary of life. He was very careful all the time never to beexuberant. No matter how beautiful the landscape, he never allowed himselfto exube. 

Several times I succeeded in startling him enough to say "Ah!" but thatwas all. He had the air all the time of a man who had been reared inluxury and fondled so much in the lap of wealth that he was weary of life, and yearned for a bright immortality. I have often wished that thepruning-hook of time would use a little more discretion. The _blase_ youngman seemed to be tired all the time. He was weary of life because life washollow. 

He seemed to hanker for the cool and quiet grave. I wished at times thatthe hankering might have been more mutual. But what does a cool, quietgrave want of a young man who never did anything but breathe the nice pureair into his froggy lungs and spoil it for everybody else?

This young man had a large grip-sack with him which he frequentlyconsulted. I glanced into it once while he left it open. It was not right, but I did it. I saw the following articles in it:

31 Assorted Neckties. 1 pair Socks (whole). 1 pair do. (not so whole). 17 Collars. 1 Shirt 1 quart Cuff-Buttons. 1 suit discouraged Gauze Underwear. 1 box Speckled Handkerchiefs. 1 box Condition Powders. 1 Toothbrush (prematurely bald). 1 copy Martin F. Tupper's Works. 1 box Prepared Chalk. 1 Pair Tweezers for encouraging Moustache to come out to breakfast. 1 Powder Rag. 1 Gob ecru-colored Taffy. 1 Hair-brush, with Ginger Hair in it. 1 Pencil to pencil Moustache at night. 1 Bread and Milk Poultice to put on Moustache on retiring, so that it will not forget to come out again the next day. 1 Box Trix for the breath. 1 Box Chloride of Lime to use in case breath becomes unmanageable. 1 Ear-spoon (large size). 1 Plain Mourning Head for Cane. 1 Vulcanized Rubber Head for Cane (to bite on). 1 Shoe-horn to use in working Ears into Ear-Muffs. 1 Pair Corsets. 1 Dark-brown Wash for Mouth, to be used in the morning. 1 Large Box _Ennui_, to be used in Society. 1 Box Spruce Gum, made in Chicago and warranted pure. 1 Gallon Assorted Shirt Studs. 1 Polka-dot Handkerchief to pin in side pocket, but not for nose. 1 Plain Handkerchief for nose. 1 Fancy Head for Cane (morning). 1 Fancy Head for Cane (evening). 1 Picnic Head for Cane. 1 Bottle Peppermint. 1 do. Catnip. 1 Waterbury Watch. 7 Chains for same. 1 Box Letter Paper. 1 Stick Sealing Wax (baby blue). 1 do " (Bismarck brindle). 1 do " (mashed gooseberry). 1 Seal for same. 1 Family Crest (wash-tub rampant on a field calico). 

[Illustration: HE IS NIX BONUM. ]

There were other little articles of virtu and bric-a-brac till youcouldn't rest, but these were all that I could see thoroughly before hereturned from the wash-room. 

I do not like the _blase_ young man as a traveling companion. He is _nixbonum_. He is too _E pluribus_ for me. He is not _de trop_ or _sciatica_enough to suit my style. 

If he belonged to me I would picket him out somewhere in a hostile Indiancountry, and then try to nerve myself up for the result. 

It is better to go through life reading the signs on the ten-storybuildings and acquiring knowledge, than to dawdle and "Ah!" adown ourpathway to the tomb and leave no record for posterity except that we had agood neck to pin a necktie upon. It is not pleasant to be called green, but I would rather be green and aspiring than _blase_ and hide-bound atnineteen. 

Let us so live that when at last we pass away our friends will not beimmediately and uproariously reconciled to our death. 

History of Babylon. 

The history of Babylon is fraught with sadness. It illustrates, only toopainfully, that the people of a town make or mar its success rather thanthe natural resources and advantages it may possess on the start. 

Thus Babylon, with 3, 000 years the start of Minneapolis, is to-day a holein the ground, while Minneapolis socks her XXXX flour into every corner ofthe globe, and the price of real estate would make a common dynasty totteron its throne. 

Babylon is a good illustration of the decay of a town that does not keepup with the procession. Compare her to-day with Kansas City. While Babylonwas the capital of Chaldea, 1, 270 years before the birth of Christ, andKansas City was organized so many years after that event that many of thepeople there have forgotten all about it, Kansas City has doubled herpopulation in ten years, while Babylon is simply a gothic hole in theground. 

Why did trade and emigration turn their backs upon Babylon and seek outMinneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City and Omaha? Was it because they wereblest with a bluer sky or a more genial sun? Not by any means. WhileBabylon lived upon what she had been and neglected to advertise, othertowns with no history extending back into the mouldy past, whooped with anexceeding great whoop and tore up the ground and shed printers' ink andshowed marked signs of vitality. That is the reason that Babylon is nomore. 

This life of ours is one of intense activity. We cannot rest long inidleness without inviting forgetfulness, death and oblivion. "Babylon wasprobably the largest and most magnificent city of the ancient world. "Isaiah, who lived about 300 years before Herodotus, and whose remarks areunusually free from local or political prejudice, refers to Babylon as"the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldic's excellency, " and, yet, while Cheyenne has the electric light and two daily papers, Babylon hasn'tgot so much as a skating rink. 

A city fourteen miles square with a brick wall around it 355 feet high, she has quietly forgotten to advertise, and in turn she, also, isforgotten. 

Babylon was remarkable for the two beautiful palaces, one on each side ofthe river, and the great temple of Belus. Connected with one of thesepalaces was the hanging garden, regarded by the Greeks as one of the sevenwonders of the world, but that was prior to the erection of the Washingtonmonument and civil service reform. 

This was a square of 400 Greek feet on each side. The Greek foot was notso long as the modern foot introduced by Miss Mills, of Ohio. This gardenwas supported on several tiers of open arches, built one over the other, like the walls of a classic theatre, and sustaining at each stage, orstory, a solid platform from which the arches of the next story sprung. This structure was also supported by the common council of Babylon, whocame forward with the city funds, and helped to sustain the immenseweight. 

It is presumed that Nebuchadnezzar erected this garden before his mindbecame affected. The tower of Belus, supposed by historians with a goodmemory to have been 600 feet high, as there is still a red chalk mark inthe sky where the top came, was a great thing in its way. I am glad I wasnot contiguous to it when it fell, and also that I had omitted being bornprior to that time. 

"When we turn from this picture of the past, " says the historian, Rawlinson, referring to the beauties of Babylon, "to contemplate thepresent condition of these localities, we are at first struck withastonishment at the small traces which remain of so vast and wonderful ametropolis. The broad walls of Babylon are utterly broken down. God hasswept it with the besom of destruction. "

One cannot help wondering why the use of the besom should have beenabandoned. As we gaze upon the former site of Babylon we are forced toadmit that the new besom sweeps clean. On its old site no crumbling archesor broken columns are found to indicate her former beauty. Here and therehuge heaps of debris alone indicate that here Godless wealth and wicked, selfish, indolent, enervating, ephemeral pomp, rose and defied the supremelaws to which the bloated, selfish millionaire and the hard-handed, hungrylaborer alike must bow, and they are dust to-day. 

Babylon has fallen. I do not say this in a sensational way or todepreciate the value of real estate there, but from actual observation, and after a full investigation, I assent without fear of successfulcontradiction, that Babylon has seen her best days. Her boomlet is busted, and, to use a political phrase, her oriental hide is on the Chaldeanfence. 

Such is life. We enter upon it reluctantly; we wade through it doubtfully, and die at last timidly. How we Americans do blow about what we can dobefore breakfast, and, yet, even in our own brief history, how we havedemonstrated what a little thing the common two-legged man is. He rises uprapidly to acquire much wealth, and if he delays about going to Canada hegoes to Sing Sing, and we forget about him. There are lots of modernBabylonians in New York City to-day, and if it were my business I wouldcall their attention to it. The assertion that gold will procure allthings has been so common and so popular that too many consider first thebank account, and after that honor, home, religion, humanity and commondecency. Even some of the churches have fallen into the notion that firstcomes the tall church, then the debt and mortgage, the ice cream sociableand the kingdom of Heaven. Cash and Christianity go hand in handsometimes, but Christianity ought not to confer respectability on anybodywho comes into the church to purchase it. 

I often think of the closing appeal of the old preacher, who was moreearnest than refined, perhaps, and in winding up his brief sermon on theChristian life, said: "A man may lose all his wealth and get poor andhungry and still recover, he may lose his health and come down close tothe dark stream and still git well again, but, when he loses his immortalsoul it is good-bye John. "

Lovely Horrors. 

I dropped in the other day to see New York's great congress of wax figuresand soft statuary carnival. It is quite a success. The first thing you doon entering is to contribute to the pedestal fund. New York this spring ismostly a large rectangular box with a hole in the top, through which thegenial public is cordially requested to slide a dollar to give the goddessof liberty a boom. 

I was astonished and appalled at the wealth of apertures in Gotham throughwhich I was expected to slide a dime to assist some deserving object. Every little while you run into a free-lunch room where there is a modelship that will start up and operate if you feed it with a nickle. I nevervisited a town that offered so many inducements for early and judiciousinvestments as New York. 

But we were speaking of the wax works. I did not tarry long to notice thepresidents of the United States embalmed in wax, or to listen to the bandof lutists who furnished music in the winter garden. I ascertained wherethe chamber of horrors was located, and went there at once. It is lovely. I have never seen a more successful aggregation of horrors under one roofand at one price of admission. 

If you want to be shocked at cost, or have your pores opened for a merelynominal price, and see a show that you will never forget as long as youlive, that is the place to find it. I never invested my money so as to getso large a return for it, because I frequently see the whole show yet inthe middle of the night, and the cold perspiration ripples down my spinalcolumn just as it did the first time I saw it. 

The chamber of horrors certainly furnishes a very durable show. I don'tthink I was ever more successfully or economically horrified. 

I got quite nervous after a while, standing in the dim religious lightwatching the lovely horrors. But it is the saving of money that I look atmost. I have known men to pay out thousands of dollars for a collection ofdelirium tremens and new-laid horrors no better than these that you get onweek days for fifty cents and on Sundays for two bits. Certainly New Yorkis the place where you get your money's worth. 

There are horrors there in that crypt that are well worth double the priceof admission. One peculiarity of the chamber of horrors is that youfinally get nervous when anyone touches you, and you immediately suspectthat he is a horror who has come out of his crypt to get a breath of freshair and stretch his legs. 

[Illustration: HE WAS GREATLY ANNOYED. ]

That is the reason I shuddered a little when I felt a man's hand in mypocket. It was so unexpected, and the surroundings were such that I musthave appeared startled. The man was a stranger to me, though I could seethat he was a perfect gentleman. His clothes were superior to mine inevery way, and he had a certain refinement of manners which betrayed hisill-concealed Knickerbocker lineage high. 

I said, "Sir, you will find my fine cut tobacco in the other pocket. " Thisstartled him so that he wheeled about and wildly dashed into the arms of awax policeman near the door. When he discovered that he was in theclutches of a suit of second-hand clothes filled with wax, he seemed to begreatly annoyed and strode rapidly away. 

I returned to view a chaste and truthful scene where one man hadsuccessfully killed another with a club. I leaned pensively against acolumn with my own spinal column, wrapped in thought. 

Pretty soon a young gentleman from New Jersey with an Adam's apple on himlike a full-grown yam, and accompanied by a young lady also from themosquito jungles of Jersey, touched me on the bosom with his umbrella andbegan to explain me to his companion. 

[Illustration: THIS IS JESSE JAMES. ]

"This, " said the Adam's apple with the young man attached to it, "is JesseJames, the great outlaw chief from Missouri. How life-like he is. Littlewould you think, Emeline, that he would as soon disembowel a bank, kill theentire board of directors of a railroad company and ride off the rollingstock, as you would wrap yourself around a doughnut. How tender and kindhe looks. He not only looks gentle and peaceful, but he looks to me as ifhe wasn't real bright. "

I then uttered a piercing shriek and the young man from New Jersey wentaway. Nothing is so embarrassing to an eminent man as to stand quietlynear and hear people discuss him. 

But it is remarkable to see people get fooled at a wax show. Every day awax figure is taken for a live man, and live people are mistaken for wax. I took hold of a waxen hand in one corner of the winter garden to see ifthe ring was a real diamond, and it flew up and took me across the ear insuch a life-like manner that my ear is still hot and there is a roaring inmy head that sounds very disagreeable, indeed. 

The Bite of a Mad Dog. 

A "Family Physician, " published in 1883, says, for the bite of a mad dog:"Take ash-colored ground liverwort, cleaned, dried, and powdered, half anounce; of black pepper, powdered, a quarter of an ounce. Mix these welltogether, and divide the powder into four doses, one of which must betaken every morning, fasting, for four mornings successively in half anEnglish pint of cow's milk, warm. After these four doses are taken, thepatient must go into the cold bath, or a cold spring or river, everymorning, fasting, for a month. He must be dipped all over, but not stay in(with his head above water) longer than half a minute if the water is verycold. After this he must go in three times a week for a fortnight longer. He must be bled before he begins to take the medicine. "

It is very difficult to know just what is best to do when a person isbitten by a mad dog, but my own advice would be to kill the dog. Afterthat feel of the leg where bitten, and ascertain how serious the injuryhas been. Then go home and put on another pair of pantaloons, throwingaway those that have been lacerated. Parties having but one pair ofpantaloons will have to sequester themselves or excite remarks. Then takea cold bath, as suggested above, but do not remain in the bath (with thehead above water) more than half an hour. If the head is under water, youmay remain in the bath until the funeral, if you think best. 

When going into the bath it would be well to take something in your pocketto bite, in case the desire to bite something should overcome you. Someuse a common shingle-nail for this purpose, while others prefer a personalfriend. In any event, do not bite a total stranger on an empty stomach. Itmight make you ill. 

Never catch a dog by the tail if he has hydrophobia. Although that end ofthe dog is considered the most safe, you never know when a mad dog mayreverse himself. 

If you meet a mad dog on the street, do not stop and try to quell him witha glance of the eye. Many have tried to do that, and it took several daysto separate the two and tell which was mad dog and which was queller. 

The real hydrophobia dog generally ignores kindness, and devotes himselfmostly to the introduction of his justly celebrated virus. A good thing todo on observing the approach of a mad dog is to flee, and remain fleduntil he has disappeared. 

Hunting mad dogs in a crowded street is great sport. A young man with anew revolver shooting at a mad dog is a fine sight. He may not kill thedog, but he might shoot into a covey of little children and possibly getone. 

It would be a good plan to have a balloon inflated and tied in the backyard during the season in which mad dogs mature, and get into it on theapproach of the infuriated animal (get into the balloon, I mean, not thedog). 

This plan would not work well, however, in case a cyclone should come atthe same time. When we consider all the uncertainties of life, and thedanger from hydrophobia, cyclones and breach of promise, it seemssometimes as though the penitentiary was the only place where a man couldbe absolutely free from anxiety. 

If you discover that your dog has hydrophobia, it is absolutely foolish totry to cure him of the disease. The best plan is to trade him off at oncefor anything you can get. Do not stop to haggle over the price, but closehim right out below cost. 

Do not tie a tin can to the tail of a mad dog. It only irritates him, andhe might resent it before you get the can tied on. A friend of mine, whowas a practical joker, once sought to tie a tin can to the tail of a maddog on an empty stomach. His widow still points with pride to the marks ofhis teeth on the piano. If mad dogs would confine themselves exclusivelyto practical jokers, I would be glad to endow a home for indigent mad dogsout of my own private funds. 

Arnold Winkelreid. 

This great man lived in the old romantic days when it was a common thingfor a patriot to lay down his life that his country might live. He knewnot fear, and in his noble heart his country was always on top. Not aloneat election did Arnold sacrifice himself, but on the tented field, wherethe buffalo grass was soaked in gore, did he win for himself a deathlessname. He was as gritty as a piece of liver rolled in the sand. Where glorywaited, there you would always find Arnold Winkelreid at the bat, withWilliam Tell on deck. 

[Illustration: CLEAR THE TRACK. ]

One day the army of the tyrant got a scoop on the rebel mountaineers andit looked bad for the struggling band of chamois shooters. While Arnold'sdetachment didn't seem to amount to a hill of beans, the hosts of thetyrannical Austrian loomed up like six bits and things looked forbidding. It occurred to Colonel Winkelreid that the correct thing would be to breakthrough the war front of the enemy, and then, while in his rear, crash inhis cranium with a cross gun while he was looking the other way. Acting onthis thought, he asked several of his most trusted men to break throughthe Austrian line, so that the balance of the command could pass throughand slaughter enough of the enemy for a mess, but these men seemed alittle reticent about doing so, owing to the inclemency of the weather andthe threatening aspect of the enemy. The armed foe swarmed on everyhillside and their burnished spears glittered below in the canon. Youcouldn't throw a stone in any direction without hitting a phalanx. It wasa good year for the phalanx business. 

Then Arnold took off his suspenders, and, putting a fresh chew of tobaccoin among his back teeth, he told his men to follow him and he would showthem his little racket. Marching up to the solid line of lances, hegathered an armful and put them in the pit of his stomach, and, as he sankto the earth, he spoke in a shrill tone of voice to posterity, saying, "Clear the track for Liberty. " He then died. 

His remains looked like a toothpick holder. 

But he made way for Liberty, and his troops were victorious. 

At the inquest it was shown that he might have recovered, had not thespears sat so hard on his stomach. 

Probably A. Winkelreid will be remembered with gratitude long after thename of the Sweet Singer of Michigan shall have rotted in oblivion. Herecognized and stuck to his proper spear. (This is a little mirthfuldeviation of my own. )

I can think of some men now, even in this $ age of the world, who couldwin glory by doing as A. W. Did. They could offer themselves up. Theycould suffer for the right and have their names passed down to posterity, and it would be perfectly splendid. 

But the heroes of to-day are different. They are just as courageous, butthey take a wheelbarrow and push it from New York to San Francisco, orthey starve forty days and forty nights and then eat watermelon andlecture, or they eat 800 snipe in 800 years, or get an inspiration andkill somebody with it. 

The heroes of our day do not wear peaked hats and shoot chamois, and sasstyrants and knock the worm out of an apple at fifty-nine yards rise with across gun, as Tell did, but they know how to be loved by the people andget half of the gate money. They are brave, but not mortally. The heroesof our day all die of old age or political malaria. 

Murray and the Mormons. 

Gov. Murray, the gritty Gentile governor of Utah, would be noticed in acrowd. He is very tall, yet well proportioned, square-built and handsome. He was called fine looking in Kentucky, but the narrow-chested apostle ofthe abnormally connubial creed does not see anything pretty about him. Murray moves about through Salt Lake City in a cool, self-possessed kindof way that is very annoying to the church. Full-bearded, with brownmoustache and dark hair parted a little to leeward of center; clothed in adiagonal Prince Albert coat, a silk hat and other clothes, he strollsthrough Zion like a man who hasn't got a yelping majority of ignorantlepers, led by a remorseless gang of nickel-plated apostles, thirsting forhis young blood. I really believe he don't care a continental. The days ofthe avenging angel and the meek-eyed Danite, carrying a large sock loadedwith buckshot, are over, perhaps; but only those who try to be Gentiles ina land of polygamous wives and anonymous white-eyed children, know howvery unpopular it is. Judge Goodwin, of the Tribune, feels lonesome if hegets through the day without a poorly spelled, spattered, daubed andprofane valentine threatening his life. The last time I saw him he showedme a few of them. They generally referred to him as a blankety blank"skunk, " and a "hound of hell. " He said he hoped I wound pardon him forthe apparent egotism, but he felt as though the Tribune was attractingattention almost everyday. Some of these little billet-doux invited him tocall at a trysting place on Tribune avenue and get his alleged brainsscattered over a vacant lot. Most all of them threatened him with arectangular head, a tin ear, or a watch pocket under the eye He didn'tseem to care much. He felt pleased and proud. Goodwin was always pleasedwith things that other men didn't like much. In the old days, when he andMark Twain and Dan DeQuille were together, this was noticed in him. Gov. Murray is the same way. He feels the public pulse, and says to himself:"Sometime there's going to be music here by the entire band, and I desireto be where I shan't miss a note. "

There are people who think the Mormons will not fight. Perhaps not. Theywon't if they are let alone, and allowed to fill the sage brush and linethe banks of the Jordan with juvenile _nom de plumes_. They are peacefulwhile they may populate Utah and invade adjoining territories with theirherds of ostensible wives and prattling progeny; while they can bring inevery year via Castle Garden and the stock yards palace emigrant car, thousands of proselyted paupers from every pest house of Europe, and thefree-love idiots of America. But when Murray gets an act of congress athis back and a squad of nervy, gamy, law-abiding monogamous assistantsappointed by the president under that act of congress to knock crosswiseand crooked the Jim Crow revelations of Utah and Mormondom, you will seethe fur fly, and the fragrant follower of a false prophet will rise upWilliam Riley and the regular army will feel lonesome. I asked a staffofficer in one of the territories last summer what would be the result ifthe Mormons, with their home drill and their arms and their devotion tohome and their fraudulent religion, should awake Nicodemas and begin tomassacre the Gentiles, and the regular army should be sent over theWasatch range to quell the trouble. 

"Why, " said he, "the white-eyed followers of Mormonism would kill theregular army with clubs. You can wear out a tribe of hostile Indians whenthe grass gives out and the antelope hunts the foothills, but the Mormonsmake everything they eat, drink and wear. They don't care whether there'stariff or free trade. They can make everything from gunpowder to a knitundershirt, from a $250 revelation to a hand-made cocktail. When a churchgets where it can make such cooking whisky as the Mormons do, it is timeto call for volunteers and put down the hydra-headed monster. "

If congress don't step on a technicality and fall down, it looks likeamusement ahead, and if a District of Columbia rule, or martial law, ortocsin of war is the result, Gov. Murray is a good style of war governor. He isn't the kind of a man to put on his wife's gossamer cloak and meanderover into Montana. He would give the matter his attention, and you wouldfind him in the neighborhood when the national government decided to sitdown on disorderly conduct in Utah. The first lever to be used will be thegreat wealth of which the Mormon church and its members privately arepossessed. Then the oleaginous prophet will get a revelation to gird uphis loins and to load the double-barrel shotgun, and fire the culverin, and to knock monogamy into a cocked hat. Money first and massacre second. They can draw on their revelation supply house at three days, any time, for authority to fill the irrigation ditches of Zion with the blood of theGentile and feed his vital organs to the coyote. 

About Geology. 

Geology is that branch of natural science which treats of the structure ofthe earth's crust and the mode of formation of its rocks. It is a pleasantand profitable study, and to the man who has married rich and does notneed to work, the amusement of busting geology with the Bible, or bustingthe Bible with geology is indeed a great boon. 

Geology goes hand in hand with zoology, botany, physical geography andother kindred sciences. Taxidermy, chiropody and theology are not kindredsciences. 

Geologists ascertain the age of the earth by looking at its teeth andcounting the wrinkles on its horns. They have learned that the earth isnot only of great age, but that it is still adding to its age from year toyear. 

It is hard to say very much of a great science in so short an article, andthat is one great obstacle which I am constantly running against as ascientist. 

I once prepared a paper in astronomy entitled "The Chronological Historyand Habits of the Spheres. " It was very exhaustive and weighed fourpounds. I sent it to a scientific publication that was supposed to beworking for the advancement of our race. The editor did not print it, buthe wrote me a crisp and saucy postal card, requesting me to call with adray and remove my stuff before the board of health got after it. In fiveshort years from that time he was a corpse. As I write these lines, Ilearn with ill-concealed pleasure that he is still a corpse. An awfuldispensation of Providence, in the shape of a large, wilted cucumber, laidhold upon his vitals and cursed him with an inward pain. He has since hadthe opportunity, by actual personal observation, to see whether thestatements by me relating to astronomy were true. His last words were:"Friends, Romans and countrymen, beware of the q-cumber. It will w up. " Itwas not original, but it was good. 

The four great primary periods of the earth's history are as follows, viz, to-wit:

1. The Eozoic or dawn of life. 

2. The Palaeozoic or period of ancient life. 

3. The Mesozoic or middle period of life. 

4. The Neozoic or recent period of life. 

These are all subdivided again, and other words more difficult to spellare introduced into science, thus crowding out the vulgar herd who cannotafford to use the high priced terms in constant conversation. 

Old timers state that the primitive condition of the earth was extremelydamp. With the onward march of time, and after the lapse of millions ofyears, men found that they could get along with less and less water, untilat last we see the pleasant, blissful state of things. Aside from the useof water at our summer resorts, that fluid is getting to be less and lesspopular. And even here at these resorts it is generally flavored with someforeign substance. 

[Illustration: THE MASTODON. ]

The earth's crust is variously estimated in the matter of thickness. Somethink it is 2, 500 miles thick, which would make it safe to run heavytrains across the earth anywhere on top of a second mortgage, while otherscientists say that if we go down one-tenth of that distance we will reacha place where the worm dieth not. I do not wish to express an opinion asto the actual depth or thickness of the earth's crust, but I believe thatit is none too thick to suit me. 

Thickness in the earth's crust is a mighty good fault. We estimate the ageof certain strata of the earth's formation by means of a union of ourknowledge of plant and animal life, coupled with our geological researchand a good memory. The older scientists in the field of geology do notrely solely upon the tracks of the hadrasaurus or the cornucopia for theirdata. They simply use these things to refresh their memory. 

I wish that I had time and space to describe some of the beautifulbacteria and gigantic worms that formerly inhabited the earth. Such anaggregation of actual, living Silurian monsters, any one of which wouldmake a man a fortune to-day, if it could be kept on ice and exhibited forone season only. You could take a full grown mastodon to-day, and with nocalliope, no lithographs, no bearded lady, no clown with four pillows inhis pantaloons and no iron-jawed woman, you could go across this continentand successfully compete with the skating rink. 

There would be but one difficulty. Tour expenses would not be heavy. Themastodon would be willing to board around, and no one would feel liketurning a mastodon out of doors if he seemed to be hungry; but he mightget away from you and frolic away so far in one night that you couldn'tget him for a day or two, even if you sent a detective for him. 

If I had a mastodon I would rather take him when he was young, and then Icould make a pet of him, so that he could come and eat out of my handwithout taking the hand off at the same time. A large mastodon weighing ahundred tons or so is awkward, too. I suppose that nothing is more painfulthan to be stepped on by an adult mastodon. 

I hope at some future time to write a paper for the Academy of Science onthe subject of "Deceased Fauna, Fossiliferous Debris and Extinct Jokes, "showing how, when and why these early forms of animal life came to beextinct. 

A Wallula Night. 

I have just returned after a short tour in the far West. I made the tourwith my new lecture, which I am delivering this winter for the benefit, and under the auspices, of a young man who was a sufferer in the greatrise-up-William-Biley-and-come-along-with-me cyclone, which occurred atClear Lake, in this State, a year ago last September. 

In said cyclone, said young man was severely caressed by the elements, andtipped over in such a way as to shatter the right leg, just below thegambrel joint. I therefore started out to deliver a few lectures for hisbenefit, and in so doing have made a 4, 000 mile trip over the NorthernPacific railway, and the Oregon River and Navigation company's road. Onthe former line the passenger is fed by means of the dining-car, a verygood style of entertainment, indeed, and well worthy of the age in whichwe live; but at Wallula Junction I stopped over to catch a west-boundOregon Railway and Navigation train. 

That was where I fooled myself. I should have taken my valise and a rubberdoor mat from the sleeping-car, and crawled into the lee of a snow fencefor the night. I did not give the matter enough thought. I just simplywent into the hotel and registered my name as a man would in other hotels. This house was kept, or retained, I should say, by a relative of the lateMr. Shylock. You have heard, no doubt, how some of the American hotelshave frowned on Mr. Shylock's relatives. Well, Mr. Shylock's family goteven with the whole American people the night I stopped in No. 2, secondfloor of the Abomination of Desolation. As a representative of theAmerican people, I received for my nation, vicariously, the stripesintended for many generations. 

No. 2 is regarded as a room by people who have not been in it. By thosewho have, it is looked upon as a morgue. 

When I stepped into it, I noticed an odor of the dead past. It made meshudder my overshoes off. The first thing that attracted my attentionafter I was left alone, was the fact that other people had occupied thisroom before I had, and, although they were gone, they had left a kind ofan air of inferiority that clung to the alleged apartment, an air of plugtobacco and perspiration, if you will pardon the expression. 

They had also left a pair of Venetian pantaloons. From this clue, myactive brain at once worked out the problem and settled the fact that theparty who had immediately preceded me was a man. Long and close study ofthe habits and characteristics of humanity has taught me to reason outthese matters, and to reach accurate conclusions with astonishingrapidity. 

He was not only a man, but he was a short man, with parenthetical legs anda thoughtful droop to the seat of his pants. I also discovered that moreof this man's life had been expended in sitting on a pitch pine log thanin prayer. 

One of his front teeth was gone, also. This I learned from a large cast ofhis mouth, shown on the end of a plug of tobacco still left in the pocket. 

[Illustration: IN SUSPENSE. ]

In Wallula there is a marked feeling of childlike trust and confidencebetween people. It is a feature of Wallula society, I may say. The peopleof the junction trust strangers to a remarkable extent. In what other townin this whole republic would a pair of pantaloons be thus left in thecomplete power of a total stranger, a stranger, too, to whom pantaloonswere a great boon? I could easily have caught those pantaloons off thenail, thrust them into my bosom, and fled past the drowsy night clerk, outinto the great, sheltering arms of the silent night, but I did not. 

Anon through the long hours I would awake and listen fitfully to the wailof damned souls, as it seemed to me, the wail of those who tried to staythere a week, and had starved to death. Here was their favorite wailingplace. Here was the place where damned souls seemed to throw aside allrestraint and have a good time. I tried to keep out the sound by stuffingthe pillow in my ear, but what is a cheap hotel pillow in a man's ear, ifhe wants to keep the noise out. 

So I lay there and listened to the soft sigh of the bath tub, the loud, defiant challenge of the athletic butler down stairs, the last weak deathrattle in the throat of the coffee pot in the dining room, and the wail ofthe damned souls who had formerly stopped at this hotel, but who had beenrescued at last, and had hilariously gone to perdition, only to come backat night and torment the poor guest by bragging over the superiority ofhell as a refuge from the Wallula hotel. 

Now and then in the night I would almost yield to a wild impulse and catchthose pantaloons off the hook, to rush out and go to Canada with them, andthen I would softly go through the pockets and hang them back again. 

It was an awful night. When morning dawned at last, and I took the pillowout of my ear and looked in the delirious and soap-spattered mirror, I sawthat my beautiful hair, which had been such a source of pride to me tenyears ago, had disappeared in places. I paid my bill, called the attentionof the landlord to the fact that I had not taken those pantaloons and'betrayed' his trust, and then I went away. 

Flying Machines. 

A long and exhaustive examination of the history of flying machinesenables me to give briefly some of the main points of a few, for thebenefit of those who may be interested in this science. I give what I doin order to prepare the public to take advantage of the different methods, and be ready at once to fly as soon as the weather gets pleasant. 

A Frenchman invented a flying-machine, or dofunny, as we scientists wouldterm it, in 1600 and something, whereby he could sail down from thewoodshed and not break his neck. He could not rise from the ground like alark and trill a few notes as he skimmed through the sky, but he couldfall off an ordinary hay stack like a setting hen, with the aid of hiswings. His name was Besnier. 

One hundred and twenty-five years after that a prisoner at Vienna, namedJacob Dagen, told the jailer that he could fly. The jailer seemedincredulous, and so Jake constructed a pair of double barrel umbrellas, that worked by hand, and fluttered with his machine into the air fiftyfeet. He came down in a direct line, and in doing so ran one of theumbrellas through his thorax. I am glad it is not the custom now to wearan umbrella in the thorax. 

In England, during the present century, several inventors produced flyingmachines, but in an evil hour agreed to rise on them themselves, and sothey died from their injuries. Some came down on top of the machines, while others preceded their inventions by a few feet, but the result wasthe same. The invention of flying machines has always been handicapped, asit were, by this fact Men invent a flying machine and then try to ride itand show it off, and thus they are prevented by death from perfectingtheir rolling stock and securing their right of way. 

In 1842, Mr. William Henderson got out a "two-propeller" machine, andtried to incorporate a company to utilize it for the purpose of carryingletters, running errands, driving home the cows, lighting the NorthernLights and skimming the cream off the Milky Way, but it didn't seem tocompete very successfully with other modes of travel, and so Mr. Hendersonwrapped it up in an old tent and put it away in the hay-mow. 

In 1853, Mr. J. H. Johnson patented a balloon and parachute dingus whichworked on the principle of a duck's foot in the mud. I use scientificterms because I am unable to express myself in the common language of thevulgar herd. This machine had a tail which, under great excitement, itwould throw over the dash board as it bounded through the air. 

Probably the biggest thing in its way under this head was the revival offlying under the presidency of the Duke of Argyle, the society beingcalled the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. This society made somevaluable calculations and experiments in the interest of aerostation, adding much to our scientific knowledge, and filling London with cripples. 

In 1869, Mr. Joseph T. Kaufman invented and turned loose upon the peopleof Glasgow an infernal machine intended to soar considerably in a quietkind of way and to be propelled by steam. It looked like the bird known toornithology as the _flyupithecrick_, and had an air brake, patent coupler, buffer and platform. It was intended to hold two men on ice and a rosewoodcasket with silver handles. It was mounted on wheels, and, as it did notseem to skim through the air very much, the people of Glasgow hitched aclothes line to it and used it for a band wagon. 

Rufus Porter invented an aerial dewdad ten years ago in Connecticut, whereso many crimes have been committed since Mark Twain moved there. This wascalled the "aeraport, " and looked like a seed wart floating through space. This engine was worked by springs connected with propellers. A saloon wassuspended beneath it, I presume on the principle that when a man isintoxicated he weighs a pound less. This machine flew around the rotundaof the Merchants' Exchange, in New York City, eleven times, like a henwith her head cut off, but has not been on the wing much since then. 

Other flying machines have been invented, but the air is not peopled withthem as I write. Most of them have folded their pinions and sought theseclusion of a hen-house. It is to be hoped that very soon some suchmachine will be perfected, whereby a man may flit from the fifth storywindow of the Grand Pacific Hotel, in Chicago, to Montreal beforebreakfast, leaving nothing in his room but the furniture and his kindregards. 

Such an invention would be hailed with much joy, and the sale would beenormous. Now, however, the matter is still in its infancy. The mechanicalbirds invented for the purpose of skimming through the ether blue, havenot skum. The machines were built with high hopes and a throbbing heart, but the aforesaid ether remains unskum as we go to press. The Milky Way isin the same condition, awaiting the arrival of the fearless skimmer. Willmen ever be permitted to pierce the utmost details of the sky and ramblearound among the stars with a gum overcoat on? Sometimes I trow he will, and then again I ween not. 

Asking for a Pass. 

The general passenger agent of a prominent road leading out of Chicagotoward the south, tells me that he is getting a good many letters latelyasking for passes, and he complains bitterly over the awkward andunsatisfactory style of the correspondence. Acting on this suggestion andthough a little late in the day, perhaps, I have erected the following asa guide to those who contemplate writing under similar circumstances:

Office of The Evening Squeal, January 14, 1886. 

General Passenger Agent, Great North American Gitthere R. R. , Chicago, Ill. 

Dear Sir. --I desire to know by return mail whether or no you would bepleased to swap transportation for kind words. I am the editor of "TheSqueal, " published at this place. It is a paper pure in tone, world widein its scope and irresistible in the broad sweep of its mighty arm. 

[Illustration: THE PRESS. ]

I desire to visit the great exposition at New Orleans this winter, andwould be willing to yield you a few words of editorial opinion, set inlong primer type next to pure reading matter, and without advertisingmarks. 

My object in thus addressing you is two-fold. I have always wanted to doyour road a kind act that would put it on its feet, but I have neverbefore had the opportunity. This winter I feel just like it, and am notwilling, but anxious. Another object, though trivial, perhaps, to you, isvital to me. If I do not get the pass, I am afraid I shall not reach theretill the exposition is over. You can see for yourself how important it isthat I should have transportation. Day after day the president on to thegrounds and ask if I am there. Some official will salute him and answersadly, "No, your highness, he has not yet arrived, but we look for himsoon. He is said to be stuck in a mud hole somewhere in Egypt. " Then theexposition will drag on again. 

[Illustration: STUCK IN A MUD HOLE. ]

You may make the pass read, "For self, Chicago to New Orleans and return, "and I will write the editorial, or you may make it read, "Self and wife"and I will let you write it yourself. Nothing is too good for my friends. When a man does me a kind act or shows signs of affection, I just allowhim to walk all over me and make himself perfectly free with the policy ofmy paper. 

The "Evening Squeal" has been heard everywhere. We send it to the fourwinds of Heaven, and its influence is felt wherever the English languageis respected. And yet, if you want to belong to my coterie of friends, youcan make yourself just as free with its editorial columns as you would ifyou owned it. 

And yet "The Squeal" is a bad one to stir up. I shudder to think what theresult would be if you should incur the hatred of "The Squeal. " Let usavoid such a subject or the possibility of such a calamity. 

"The Squeal" once opposed the candidacy of a certain man for the office ofschool district clerk, and in less than four years he was a corpse! Struckdown in all his wanton pride by one of the popular diseases of the day. 

My paper at one time became the foe of a certain road which tapped thegreat cranberry vineyards of northern Minnesota, and that very fall theberries soured on the vines!

I might go on for pages to show how the pathway of "The Squeal" has beenstrewn with the ruins of railroads, all prosperous and happy till theyantagonized us and sought to injure us. 

I believe that the great journals and trunk lines of the land should standin with one another. If you have the support and moral encouragement ofthe press you will feel perfectly free to run over any one who gets onyour track. Besides, if I held a pass over your road I should feel verymuch reserved about printing the details of any accident, delay or washoutalong your line. I aim to mould public opinion, but a man can subsidizeand corrupt me if he goes at it right. I write this to kind of give you apointer as to how you can go to work to do so if you see fit. 

Should you wish to pervert my high moral notions in relation to railways, please make it good for thirty days, as it may take me a week or so tomortgage my property and get ready to go in good style. I will let youknow on what day I will be in New Orleans, so that you can come and see meat that time. Should you have difficulty in obtaining an audience with me, owing to the throng of crowned heads, just show this autograph letter tothe doorkeeper, and he will show you right in. Wipe your boots beforeentering. 

Yours truly, Daniel Webster Briggs, Editor of "The Squeal. "

It is my opinion that no railroad official, however disobliging, wouldhesitate a moment about which way he would swing after reading an epistleafter this pattern. Few, indeed, are the men who would be impolitic enoughto incur the displeasure of such a paper as I have artfully represented"The Squeal" to be. 

Words About Washington. 

The name of George Washington has always had about it a glamour that madehim appear more in the light of a god than a tall man with large feet anda mouth made to fit an old-fashioned, full-dress pumpkin pie. I use theword glamour, not so much because I know what glamour means, but because Ihave never used it before, and I am getting a little tired of the short, easy words I have been using so long. 

George Washington's face has beamed out upon us for many years now, onpostage stamps and currency, in marble, and plaster, and bronze, inphotographs of original portraits, paintings, end stereoscopic views. Wehave seen him on horseback and on foot, on the war-path and on skates, cussing his troops for their shiftlessness, and then in the solitude ofthe forest, with his snorting war-horse tied to a tree, engaged in prayer. 

We have seen all these pictures of George, till we are led to believe thathe did not breathe our air or eat American groceries. But GeorgeWashington was not perfect. I say this after a long and careful study ofhis life, and I do not say it to detract the very smallest iota from theproud history of the Father of his Country. I say it simply that the boysof America who want to become George Washingtons will not feel so timidabout trying it. 

When I say that George Washington, who now lies so calmly in the limekilnat Mount Vernon, could reprimand and reproach his subordinates at times, in a way to make the ground crack open and break up the ice in theDelaware a week earlier than usual, I do not mention it in order to showthe boys of our day that profanity will make them resemble GeorgeWashington. That was one of his weak points, and no doubt he was ashamedof it, as he ought to have been. Some poets think that if they get drunk, and stay drunk, they will resemble Edgar A. Poe and George D. Prentice. There are lawyers who play poker year after year, and get regularlyskinned, because they have heard that some of the able lawyers of the pastcentury used to come home at night with poker chips in their pockets. 

Whisky will not make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I haveseen poets who relied solely on the potency of their breath, and lawyerswho knew more of the habits of a bob-tail flush than they ever did of thestatutes in such case made and provided. 

George Washington was always ready. If you wanted a man to be first inwar, you could call on George. If you desired an adult who would be firstbaseman in time of peace, Mr. Washington could be telephoned at any hourof the day or night. If you needed a man to be first in the hearts of hiscountrymen, George's postoffice address was at once secured. 

Though he was a great man, he was once a poor boy. How often we hear thatin America! It is the place where it is a positive disadvantage to be bornwealthy. And yet, sometimes I wish they had experimented a little that wayon me. I do not ask now to be born rich, of course, because it is toolate; but it seems to me that, with my natural good sense and keen insightinto human nature, I could have struggled along under the burdens andcares of wealth with great success. I do not care to die wealthy, but if Icould have been born wealthy, it seems to me I would have been tickledalmost to death. 

I love to believe that true greatness is not accidental. To think and tosay that greatness is a lottery is pernicious. Man may be wrong sometimesin his judgment of others, both individually and in the aggregate, but hewho gets ready to be a great man will surely find the opportunity. 

Many who read the above paragraph will wonder who I got to write it forme, but they will never find out. 

In conclusion, let me say that George Washington was successful for threereasons. One was that he never shook the confidence of his friends. Another was that he had a strong will without being a mule. Some peoplecannot distinguish between being firm and being a big blue jackass. 

Another reason why Washington is loved and honored to-day, is that he diedbefore we had a chance to get tired of him. This is greatly superior tothe method adopted by many modern statesmen, who wait till theirconstituency weary of them and then reluctantly and tardily die. 

The Board of Trade. 

I went into the Chicago Board of Trade awhile ago to see about buying someseed wheat for sowing on my farm next spring. I heard that I could getwheat cheaper there than anywhere else, so I went over. The members of theBoard seemed to be all present. They were on the upper floor of the house, about three hundred of them, I judge, engaged in conversation. All of themwere conversing when I entered, with the exception of a sad-looking manwho had just been squeezed into a corner and injured, I was told. I toldhim that arnica was as good as anything I knew of for that, but he seemedirritated, and I strode majestically away. Probably he thought I had nobusiness to speak to him without an introduction, but I never stand onceremony when I see anyone in pain. 

[Illustration: INDULGING IN CONVERSATION. ]

I got a ticket when I went in, and began to look around for my wheat. Ididn't see any at first. I then asked one of the conversationalists howwheat was. 

"Oh, wheat's pretty steady just now, 'specially October, but yesterday wethought the bottom had dropped out. Perfect panic in No. 2, red; No. 2, Chicago Spring, 73-7/8. Dull, my Christian friend, dull is no name for it. More fellers got pinched yesterday than would patch purgatory fifteenmiles. What you doing, buying or selling?"

"Buying. "

"Better let me sell you some choice Chicago Spring way down. Get some manyou know on the Board to make the trade for you. "

"Well, if you've got something good and cheap, and that you know willgrow, I'd like to look at it, " I said. 

He took me over by the door where there was a dishpan full of wheat, andasked me how that struck me, I said it looked good and asked him how muchhe could spare of it at . 73. He said he had 50, 000 bushels that he wasn'tusing, and he thought he could get me another 50, 000 of a friend, if Iwanted it. I said no, 100, 000 bushels was more than I needed. I told himthat if he would let me have that dishpan full, one-half cash and thebalance in installments, I might trade with him, but I didn't want him tosell me his last bushel of wheat and rob himself. 

"Very likely you've got a family, " said I, "and you mustn't forget thatwe've got a long, cold, hard winter ahead of us. Hang on to your wheat. Don't let Tom, Dick and Harry come along and chisel you out of your lastkernel, just to be neighborly. "

I remained in the room an hour and a half, the cynosure of all eyes. Thereis a great deal of sociability there. Three hundred men all talkingdiagonally at each other at the same time, reminds me of a tete-a-tete Ionce had with a warm personal friend, who was a boiler-maker. He invitedme to come around to the shop and visit him. He said we could crawl downthrough the manhole into the boiler and have a nice visit while he worked. 

I remember of following him down through the hole into the boiler;then they began to head boiler rivets, and I knew nothing more till Ireturned to consciousness the next day to find myself in my ownluxuriously-furnished apartments. 

The family physician was holding my hand. My wife asked: "Is he consciousyet, do you think, doctor?"

"Yes, " he replied, "your husband begins to show signs of life. He may livefor many years, but his intellect seems to have been mislaid during hisillness. Do you know whether the cat has carried anything out of this roomlately?"

Then my wife said: "Yes, the cat did get something out of this room onlythe other day and ate it. Poor thing!"

The Cow-Boy. 

So much amusing talk is being made recently anent the blood-bedraggledcow-boy of the wild West, that I rise as one man to say a few things, notin a dictatorial style, but regarding this so-called or so esteemed dryland pirate who, mounted on a little cow-pony and under the black flag, sails out across the green surge of the plains to scatter the rocky shoresof Time with the bones of his fellow-man. 

A great many people wonder where the cow-boy, with his abnormal thirst forblood, originated. Where did this young Jesse James, with his gory recordand his dauntless eye, come from? Was he born in a buffalo wallow at thefoot of some rock-ribbed mountain, or did he first breathe the thin airalong the brink of an alkali pond, where the horned toad and the centipedesang him to sleep, and the tarantula tickled him under the chin with itshairy legs?

Careful research and cold, hard statistics show that the cow-boy, as ageneral thing, was born in an unostentatious manner on the farm. I hate tosit down on a beautiful romance and squash the breath out of a romanticdream; but the cow-boy who gets too much moist damnation in his system, and rides on a gallop up and down Main street shooting out the lights ofthe beautiful billiard palaces, would be just as unhappy if a mouse ran uphis pantaloon-leg as you would, gentle reader. He is generally a youth whothinks he will not earn his twenty-five dollars per month if he does notyell, and whoop, and shoot, and scare little girls into St. Vitus's dance. I've known more cow-boys to injure themselves with their own revolversthan to injure anyone else. This is evidently because they are morefamiliar with the hoe than they are with the Smith & Wesson. 

One night while I had rooms in the business part of a Territorial city inthe Rocky Mountain cattle country, I was awakened at about one o'clock A. M. By the most blood-curdling cry of "Murder" I ever heard. It was murderwith a big "M. " Across the street, in the bright light of a restaurant, adozen cow-boys with broad sombreros and flashing silver braid, hugeleather chaperajas, Mexican spurs and orange silk neckties, and with flashing revolvers, werestanding. It seemed that a big, red-faced Captain Kidd of the band, withhis skin full of valley tan, had marched into an ice-cream resort with aself-cocker in his hand, and ordered the vanilla coolness for the gang. There being a dozen young folks at the place, mostly male and female, froma neighboring hop, indulging in cream, the proprietor, a meek Norwegianwith thin white hair, deemed it rude and outre to do so. He said somethingto that effect, whereat the other eleven men of alcoholic courage let offa yell that froze the cream into a solid glacier, and shook two kerosenelamps out of their sockets in the chandeliers. 

[Illustration: HE YELLED MURDER. ]

Thereupon, the little Y. M. C. A. Norwegian said:

"Gentlemans, I kain't neffer like dot squealinks and dot kaind of a tings, and you fellers mit dot ledder pantses on and dot funny glose and such atings like dot, better keep kaind of quiet, or I shall call up thepolicemen mit my delephone. "

Then they laughed at him, and cried yet again with a loud voice. 

This annoyed the ice-cream agriculturist, and he took the old axe-handlethat he used to jam the ice down around the freezer with, and peeled alarge area of scalp off the leader's dome of thought, and it hung downover his eyes, so that he could not see to shoot with any degree ofaccuracy. 

After he had yelled "Murder!" three or four times, he fell under anice-cream table, and the mild-eyed Scandinavian broke a silver-platedcastor over the organ of self-esteem, and poured red pepper, and salt, andvinegar, and Halford sauce and other relishes, on the place where thescalp was loose. 

This revived the brave but murderous cow-gentleman, and he begged that hemight be allowed to go away. 

The gentle Y. M. C. A. Superintendent of the ten-stamp ice-cream freezersthen took the revolvers away from the bold buccaneer, and kicked him outthrough a show-case, and saluted him with a bouquet of July oysters thatsuffered severely from malaria. 

All cow-boys are not sanguinary; but out of twenty you will generally findone who is brave when he has his revolvers with him; but when he forgotand left his shooters at home on the piano, the most tropical violet-eyeddude can climb him with the butt-end of a sunflower, and beat his brainsout and spatter them all over that school district. 

In the wild, unfettered West, beware of the man who never carries arms, never gets drunk and always minds his own business. He don't go aroundshooting out the gas, or intimidating a kindergarten school; but when abrave frontiersman, with a revolver in each boot and a bowie down the backof his neck, insults a modest young lady, and needs to be thrown through aplate-glass window and then walked over by the populace, call on thesilent man who dares to wear a clean shirt and human clothes. 

Stirring Incidents at a Fire. 

Last night I was awakened by the cry of fire. It was a loud, hoarse cry, such as a large, adult man might emit from his window on the night air. The town was not large, and the fire department, I had been told, was notso effective as it should have been. 

For that reason I arose and carefully dressed myself, in order to assist, if possible. I carefully lowered myself from my room, by means of astaircase which I found concealed in a dark and mysterious corner of thepassage. 

On the streets all was confusion. The hoarse cry of fire had been taken upby others, passed around from one to another, till it had swollen into adull roar. The cry of fire in a small town is always a grand sight. 

All along the street in front of Mr. Pendergast's roller rink the blanchedfaces of the people could be seen. Men were hurrying to and fro, knockingthe bystanders over in their frantic attempts to get somewhere else. Withgreat foresight, Mr. Pendergast, who had that day finished painting hisroller rink a dull-roan color, removed from the building the large cardwhich bore the legend:

FRESH PAINT!

so that those who were so disposed might feel perfectly free to lean upagainst the rink and watch the progress of the flames. 

Anon the bright glare of the devouring element might have been seenbursting through the casement of Mr. Cicero Williams's residence, facingon the alley west of Mr. Pendergast's rink. Across the street thespectator whose early education had not been neglected could distinctlyread the sign of our esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Alonzo Burlingame, which was lit up by the red glare of the flames so that the letters stoodout plainly as follows:

Alonzo Burlingame, Dealer in Soft and Hard Coal, Ice-Cream, Wood, Lime, Cement, Perfumery, Nails, Putty, Spectacles, and Horse Radish. Chocolate Caramels and Tar Roofing. Gas Fitting and Undertaking in all Its Branches. Hides, Tallow, and Maple Syrup. Fine Gold Jewelry, Silverware, and Salt. Glue, Codfish, and Gent's Neckwear. Undertaker and Confectioner. Diseases of Horses and Children a Specialty. 

Jno. White, Ptr. 

The flames spread rapidly, until they threatened the Palace rink of ouresteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. Pendergast, whose genial and urbane mannerhas endeared him to all. 

With a degree of forethought worthy of a better cause, Mr. Leroy W. Buttssuggested the propriety of calling out the hook and ladder company, anorganization of which every one seemed to be justly proud. Some delayensued in trying to find the janitor of Pioneer Hook and Ladder CompanyNo. 1's building, but at last he was secured, and, after he had gone homefor the key, Mr. Butts ran swiftly down the street to awaken the foreman, but, after he had dressed himself and inquired anxiously about the fire, he said that he was not foreman of the company since the 2d of April. 

Meantime the firefiend continued to rise up ever and anon on his hind feetand lick up salt-barrel after salt-barrel in close proximity to the Palacerink, owned by our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Pendergast. Twice Mr. Pendergast was seen to shudder, after which he went home and filled out ablank which he forwarded to the insurance company. 

Just as the town seemed doomed, the hook and ladder company came rushingdown the street with their navy-blue hook and ladder truck. It is indeed abeauty, being one of the Excelsior noiseless hook and ladder factory'sbest instruments, with tall red pails and rich blue ladders. 

Some delay ensued, as several of the officers claimed that under a newbylaw passed in January they were permitted to ride on the truck to fires. This having been objected to by a gentleman who had lived in Chicagoseveral years, a copy of the by-laws was sent for and the disputesummarily settled. The company now donned its rubber overcoats with greatcoolness and proceeded at once to deftly twist the tail of the firefiend. 

It was a thrilling sight as James McDonald, a brother of TerranceMcDonald, Trombone, Ind. , rapidly ascended one of the ladders in the fullglare of the devouring element and fell off again. 

Then a wild cheer arose to a height of about nine feet, and all againbecame confused. 

It was now past 11 o'clock, and several of the members of the hook andladder company who had to get up early the next day in order to catch atrain excused themselves and went home to seek much-needed rest. 

Suddenly it was discovered that the brick livery stable of Mr. AbrahamMcMichaels, a nephew of our worthy assessor, was getting hot. Leaving thePalace rink to its fate, the hook and ladder company directed itsattention to the brick barn, and, after numerous attempts, at lastsucceeded in getting its large iron prong fastened on the second storywindow-sill, which was pulled out. The hook was again inserted, but not soeffectively, bringing down at this time an armful of hay and part of anold horse blanket. Another courageous jab was made with the iron hook, which succeeded in pulling out about 5 cents worth of brick. This wasgreeted by a wild burst of applause from the bystanders, during which thehook and ladder company fell over each other and added to the horror ofthe scene by a mad burst of pale-blue profanity. 

It was not long before the stable was licked up by the firefiend, and thehook and ladder company directed its attention toward the undertaking, embalming, and ice-cream parlors of our highly esteemed fellow-townsman, Mr. A. Burlingame. The company succeeded in pulling two stone window-sillsout of this building before it burned. Both times they were encored by thelarge and aristocratic audience. 

Mr. Burlingame at once recognized the efforts of the heroic firemen bytapping a keg of beer, which he distributed among them at 25 cents perglass. 

This morning a space forty-seven feet wide, where but yesterday all wasjoy and prosperity and beauty, is covered over with blackened ruins. Mr. Pendergast is overcome by grief over the loss of his rink, but assures usthat if he is successful in getting the full amount of his insurance hewill take the money and build two rinks, either one of which will be farmore imposing than the one destroyed last evening. 

A movement is on foot to give a literary and musical entertainment atBurley's hall, to raise funds for the purchase of new uniforms for the"fire laddies, " at which Mrs. Butts has consented to sing "When the RobinsNest Again, " and Miss Mertie Stout will recite "'Ostler Jo, " a selectionwhich never fails to offend the best people everywhere. Twenty-five centsfor each offense. 

Let there be a full house. 

The Little Barefoot Boy. 

With the moist and misty spring, with the pink and white columbine of thewildwood and the breath of the cellar and the incense of burning overshoesin the back yard, comes the little barefoot boy with fawn colored hair anda droop in his pantaloons. Poverty is not the grand difficulty with thelittle barefoot boy of spring. It is the wild, ungovernable desire towiggle his toes in the ambient air, and to soothe his parboiled heels inthe yielding mud. 

I see him now in my mind's eye, making his annual appearance like arheumatic housefly, stepping high like a blind horse. He has just left hisshoes in the woodshed and stepped out on the piazza to proclaim thatviolet-eyed spring is here. All over the land the gladiolus bulb and theice man begin to swell. The south wind and the new-born calf at the barnbegin to sigh. The oak tree and the dude begin to put on their springapparel. All nature is gay. The thrush is warbling in the asparagusorchard, and the prima donna does her throat up in a red flannel rag towait for another season. 

All these things indicate spring, but they are not so certain andunfailing as the little barefoot boy whose white feet are thrust into theface of the approaching season. Five months from now those little dimpledfeet, now so bleached and tender, will look like a mudturtle's back andthe superior and leading toe will have a bandage around it, tied with apiece of thread. 

Who would believe that the budding hoodlum before us, with the yellowchilblain on his heel and the early spring toad in his pocket, which hewill present to the timid teacher as a testimonial of his regard thisafternoon, may be the Moses who will lead the American people forty yearshence into the glorious sunlight of a promised land. 

He may possibly do it, but he doesn't look like it now. 

Yet John A. Logan and Samuel J. Tilden were once barefooted boys, with asuspender apiece. It doesn't seem possible, does it?

How can we imagine at this time Julius Caesar and Hannibal Hamlin andLucretia Borgia at some time or other stubbed their bare toes against aroot and filled the horizon with pianissimo wails. The barefoot boy ofspring will also proceed to bathe in the river as soon as the ice and thepoliceman are out. He will choose a point on the boulevard, where he canget a good view of those who pass, and in company with eleven other littlebarefoot boys, he will clothe himself in an Adam vest, a pair of bare-skinpantaloons, a Greek slave overcoat and a yard of sunlight, and gazeearnestly at those who go by on the other side. Up and down the bank, pasting each other with mud, the little barefoot boys of spring chase eachother, with their vertebrae sticking into the warm and sleepy air, whiledown in the marsh, where the cat-tails and the broad flags and the peachcan and the deceased horse grow, the bull-frog is twittering to his mate. 

[Illustration: A TESTIMONIAL OF REGARD. ]

Later on, the hoarse voice of a rude parental snorter is heardapproaching, and twelve slim Cupids with sunburned backs are inserted intotwelve little cotton shirts and twelve despondent pairs of pantaloons hangat half-mast to twelve home-made suspenders, and as the gloaming gathersabout the old home, twelve boys back up against the ice-house to cool off, while the enraged parent hangs up the buggy whip in the old place. 

Favored a Higher Fine. 

Will Taylor, the son of the present American Consul at Marseilles, was agood deal like other boys while at school in his old home, at Hudson, Wis. One day he called his father into the library, and said:

"Pa, I don't like to tell you, but the teacher and I have had trouble. "

"What's the matter now?"

"Well, I cut one of the desks a little with my knife, and the teacher saysI've got to pay a dollar or take a lickin'. "

"Well, why don't you take the licking and say nothing more about it? I canstand considerable physical pain, so long as it visits our family in thatform. Of course, it is not pleasant to be flogged, but you have broken arule of the school, and I guess you'll have to stand it. I presume thatthe teacher will in wrath remember mercy, and avoid disabling you so thatyou can't get your coat on any more. "

"But, pa, I feel mighty bad about it already, and if you'd pay my fine I'dnever do it again. I know a good deal more about it now, and I will neverdo it again. A dollar ain't much to you, pa, but it's a heap to a boy thathasn't got a cent. If I could make a dollar as easy as you can, pa, I'dnever let my little boy get flogged that way just to save a dollar. If Ihad a little feller that got licked bekuz I didn't put up for him, I'dhate the sight of money always. I'd feel as if every dollar in my pockethad been taken out of my little kid's back. "

"Well, now, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a dollar to save youfrom punishment this time, but if anything of this kind ever occurs againI'll hold you while the teacher licks you, and then I'll get the teacherto hold you while I lick you. That's the way I feel about that. If youwant to go around whittling up our educational institutions you can do so;but you will have to purchase them afterward yourself. I don't propose tobuy any more damaged school furniture. You probably grasp my meaning, doyou not? I send you to school to acquire an education, not to acquireliabilities, so that you can come around and make an assessment on me. Ifeel a great interest in you, Willie, but I do not feel as though itshould be an assessable interest. I want to go on, of course, and improvethe property, but when I pay my dues on it I want to know that it goestoward development work. I don't want my assessments to go toward thepurchase of a school-desk with American hieroglyphics carved on it. 

"I hope that you will bear this in your mind, my son, and beware. It willbe greatly to your interest to beware. If I were in your place I would putin a large portion of my time in the beware business. "

The boy took the dollar and went thoughtfully away to school, and no morewas ever said about the matter until Mr. Taylor learned casually severalmonths later that the Spartan youth had received the walloping and filedaway the dollar for future reference. The boy was afterward heard to saythat he favored a much heavier fine in cases of that kind. One whippingwas sufficient, he said, but he favored a fine of $5. It ought to besevere enough to make it an object. 

"I Spy. "

Dear reader, do you remember the boy of your school who did the heavyfalling through the ice and was always about to break his neck, butmanaged to live through it all? Do you call to mind the youth who neverallowed anybody else to fall out of a tree and break his collar bone whenhe could attend to it himself? Every school has to secure the services ofsuch a boy before it can succeed, and so our school had one. When Ientered the school I saw at a glance that the board had neglected toprovide itself with a boy whose duty it was to nearly kill himself everyfew days in order to keep up the interest so I applied for the position. Isecured it without any trouble whatever. The board understood at once frommy bearing that I would succeed. And I did not betray the trust they hadreposed in me. 

[Illustration: BRINGING IN THE REMAINS. ]

Before the first term was over I had tried to climb two trees at once andbeen carried home on a stretcher; been pulled out of the river with mylungs full of water, and artificial respiration resorted to; been jerkedaround over the north half of the county by a fractious horse whose halterI had tied to my leg, and which leg is now three inches longer than theother; together with various other little early eccentricities which Icannot at this moment call to mind. My parents at last got so that alongabout 2 o'clock P. M. They would look anxiously out of the window and say, "Isn't it about time for the boys to get here with William's remains? Theygenerally get here before 2 o'clock. "

One day five or six of us were playing "I spy" around our barn. Every bodyknows how to play "I spy. " One shuts his eyes and counts 100, forinstance, while the others hide. Then he must find the rest and say "Ispy" so-and-so and touch the "goal" before they do. If anybody beats himto the goal the victim has to "blind" over again. 

Well, I knew the ground pretty well, and could drop twenty feet out of thebarn window and strike on a pile of straw so as to land near the goal, touch it, and let the crowd in free without getting found out. I did thisseveral times and got the blinder, James Bang, pretty mad. After a boy hascounted 500 or 600, and worked hard to gather in the crowd, only to getjeered and laughed at by the boys, he loses his temper. It was so withJames Cicero Bang. I knew that he almost hated me, and yet I went on. Finally, in the fifth ballot, I saw a good chance to slide down and letthe crowd in again as I had done on former occasions. I slipped out of thewindow and down the side of the barn about two feet, when I was detainedunavoidably. There was a "batten" on the barn that was loose at the upperend. I think I was wearing my father's vest on that day, as he was awayfrom home, and I frequently wore his clothes when he was absent. Anyhowthe vest was too large, and when I slid down that loose board ran upbetween the vest and my person in such a way as to suspend me abouteighteen feet from the ground, in a prominent but very uncomfortableposition. 

I remember it quite distinctly. James C. Bang came around where he couldsee me. He said: "I spy Billy Nye and touch the goal before him. " No onecame to remove the barn. No one came to sympathize with me in my greatsorrow and isolation. Every little while James C. Bang would come aroundthe corner and say: "Oh, I see ye. You needn't think you're out of sightup there. I can see you real plain. You better come down and blind. I cansee ye up there!"

I tried to unbutton my vest and get down there and lick James, but it wasof no use. It was a very trying time. I can remember how I tried to kickmyself loose, but failed. Sometimes I would kick the barn and sometimes Iwould kick a large hole in the horizon. Finally I was rescued by aneighbor who said he didn't want to see a good barn kicked into chaos justto save a long-legged boy that wasn't worth over six bits. 

It affords me great pleasure to add that while I am looked up to and madlyloved by every one that does not know me, Jas. C. Bang is brevet presidentof a fractured bank, taking a lonely bridal tour by himself in Europe andwaiting for the depositors to die of old age. 

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they most generally get there withboth feet. (Adapted from the French by permission. )

Mark Anthony. 

Marcus Antonius, commonly called Mark Antony, was a celebrated Romangeneral and successful politician, who was born in 83 B. C. Hisgrandfather, on his mother's side, was L. Julius Caesar, and it isthought that to Mark's sagacity in his selection of a mother, much ofhis subsequent success was due. 

Young Antony was rather gay and festive during his early years, and led alife that in any city but Rome would have occasioned talk. He got into agreat many youthful scrapes, and nothing seemed to please him better thanto repeatedly bring his father's gray hairs down in sorrow to the grave. Debauchery was a matter to which he gave much thought, and many a time hewas found consuming the midnight oil while pursuing his studies in thisline. 

At that time Rome was well provided for in the debauchery department, andMr. Antony became a thorough student of the entire curriculum. 

About 57 B. C. He obtained command of the cavalry of Gambinino in Syriaand Egypt. He also acted as legate for Caesar in Gaul about 52 B. C. , asnearly as I can recall the year. I do not know exactly what a legate is, but it had something to do with the Roman ballet, I understand, andcommanded a good salary. 

He was also elected, in 50, B. C. , as Argus and Tribune--acting as Tribuneat night and Argus during the day time, I presume, or he may have beenelected Tribune and ex-officio Argus. He was more successful as Tribunethan he was in the Argus business. 

Early in 49, B. C. , he fled to Caesar's camp, and the following year wasappointed commander-in-chief. He commanded the left wing of the army atthe battle of Pharsalia, and years afterward used to be passionately fondof describing it and explaining how he saved the day, and how everybodyelse was surprised but him, and how he was awakened by hearing one of theenemy's troops, across the river, stealthily pulling on his pantaloons. 

Antony married Fulvia, the widow of a successful demagogue named P. Clodius. This marriage could hardly be regarded as a success. It wouldhave been better for the widow if she had remained Mrs. P. Clodius, forMark Antony was one of those old-fashioned Romans who favored the utmostlatitude among men, but heartily enjoyed seeing an unfaithful woman burnedat the stake. In those days the Roman girl had nothing to do but live apure and blameless life, so that she could marry a shattered Roman rakewho had succeeded in shunning a blameless life himself, and at last, whenhe was sick of all kinds of depravity and needed a good, careful wife totake care of him, would come with his dappled, sin-sick soul and shatteredconstitution, and his vast acquisitions of debts, and ask to be loved by anoble young woman. Nothing pleased a _blase_ Roman so well as to have ayoung and beautiful girl, with eyes like liquid night, to take the job ofreforming him. I frequently get up in the night to congratulate myselfthat I was not born, 2, 000 years ago, a Roman girl. 

The historian continues to say, that though Mr. Antony continued to live alife of licentious lawlessness, that occasioned talk even in Rome, he wassingularly successful in politics. 

He was very successful at funerals, also, and his off-hand obituary workswere sought for far and wide. His impromptu remarks at the grave ofCaesar, as afterward reported by Mr. Shakespeare, from memory, attractedgeneral notice and made the funeral a highly enjoyable affair. After thisno assassination could be regarded as a success, unless Mark Antony couldbe secured to come and deliver his justly celebrated eulogy. 

About 43, B. C. , Antony, Octavius and Lepidus formed a co-partnershipunder the firm name and style of Antony, Octavius & Co. , for the purposeof doing a general, all-round triumvirate business and dealing in Romanrepublican pelts. The firm succeeded in making republicanism extremelyodious, and for years a republican hardly dared to go out after dark tofeed the horse, lest he be jumped on by a myrmidon and assassinated. Itwas about this time that Cicero had a misunderstanding with Mark'smyrmidons and went home packed in ice. 

Mark Antony, when the firm of Antony, Octavius & Co. Settled up itsaffairs, received as his share the Asiatic provinces and Egypt. It was atthis time that he met Cleopatra at an Egyptian sociable and fell in lovewith her. Falling in love with fair women and speaking pieces overnew-made graves seemed to be Mark's normal condition. He got into aquarrel with Octavius and settled it by marrying Octavia, Octavius'sister, but this was not a love match, for he at once returned toCleopatra, the author of Cleopatra's needle and other works. 

This love for Cleopatra was no doubt the cause of his final overthrow, forhe frequently went over to see her when he should have been at homekilling invaders. He ceased to care about slashing around in carnage, andpreferred to turn Cleopatra's music for her while she knocked out theteeth of her old upright piano and sang to him in a low, passionate, _voxhumana_ tone. 

So, at last, the great cemetery declaimer and long distance assassin, MarkAntony, was driven out of his vast dominions after a big naval defeat atActium, in September, 31 B. C. , retreated to Alexandria, called for morereinforcements and didn't get them. Deserted by his fleet, and reduced toa hand-me-down suit of clothes and a two-year-old plug hat, he wrote apoetic wail addressed to Cleopatra and sent it to the Alexandria papers;then, closing the door and hanging up his pantaloons on a nail so as toreduce the sag in the knees, he blew out the gas and climbed over the highboard fence which stands forever between the sombre present and the darkblue, mysterious ultimatum. 

Man Overbored. 

"Speaking about prohibition, " said Misery Brown one day, while we sat lyingon the damp of the _Blue Tail Fly_, "I am prone to allow that the more youprohibit, the more you--all at once--discover that you have more or lessfailed to prohibit. 

"Now, you can win a man over to your way of thinking, sometimes, but youmustn't do it with the butt-end of a telegraph-pole. You might convert himthat way, perhaps, but the mental shock and phrenological concussion ofthe argument might be disastrous to the convert himself. 

"A man once said to me that rum was the devil's drink, that Satan's homewas filled with the odor of hot rum, that perdition was soaked with spicedrum and rum punch. 'You wot not, ' said he, 'the ruin rum has rot. Why, Misery Brown, ' said he, 'rum is my _bete noir_. ' I said I didn't care whathe used it for, he'd always find it very warming to the system. I told himhe could use it for a hot _bete noir_, or a _blanc mange_, or any of thosefancy drinks; I didn't care. 

"But the worst time I ever had grappling with the great enemy, I reckon, was in the later years of the war, when I pretty near squashed therebellion. Grim-visaged war had worn me down pretty well. I played the bigtuba in the regimental band, and I began to sigh for peace. 

"We had been on the march all summer, it seemed to me. We'd travel throughdust ankle-deep all day that was just like ashes, and halt in the red-hotsun five minutes to make coffee. We'd make our coffee in five minutes, andsometimes we'd make it in the middle of the road; but that's neither herenor there. 

"We finally found out that we would make a stand in a certain town, andthat the Q. M. Had two barrels of old and reliable whisky in store. Wealso found out that we couldn't get any for medical purposes nor anythingelse All we could do was to suffer on and wait till the war closed. Ididn't feel like postponing the thing myself, so I began to investigate. The great foe of humanity was stored in a tobacco-house, and the Q. M. Slept three nights between the barrels. The chances for a debauch lookedpeaked and slim in the extreme. However, there was a basement below, and Igot in there one night with a half-inch auger, and two wash-tubs. Later onthere was a sound of revelry by night. There was considerable 'on with thedance, let joy be unconfined. '

"The next day there was a spongy appearance to the top of the head, whichseemed to be confined to our regiment, as a result of the sudden givingway, as it were, of prohibitory restrictions. It was a very disagreeableday, I remember. All nature seemed clothed in gloom, and R. E. Morse, P. D. Q. , seemed to be in charge of the proceedings. Redeyed Regret waseverywhere. 

"We then proceeded to yearn for the other barrel of woe, that we mightpile up some more regret, and have enough misery to last us through thebalance of the campaign. We acted on this suggestion, and, with a firmresolve and the same half-inch auger, we stole once more into the basementof the tobacco-house. 

"I bored nineteen consecutive holes in the atmosphere, and then anintimate friend of mine bored twenty-seven distinct holes in the floor, only to bore through the bosom of the night. Eleven of us spent the mostof the night boring into the floor, and at three o'clock A. M. It lookedlike a hammock, it was so full of holes. The quartermaster slept onthrough it all. He slept in a very audible tone of voice, and every nowand then we could hear him slumbering on. 

"At last we decided that he was sleeping middling close to that barrel, sowe began to bore closer to the snore. It was my turn to bore, I remember, and I took the auger with a heavy heart. I bored through the floor, andfor the first time bored into something besides oxygen. It was thequartermaster. A wild yell echoed through the southern confederacy, and Ipulled out my auger. It had on the point a strawberry mark, and a fragmentof one of those old-fashioned woven wire gray shirts, such asquartermasters used to wear. 

"I remember that we then left the tobacco-house. In the hurry we forgottwo wash-tubs, a half-inch auger, and 980, 361 new half-inch auger holesthat had never been used. "

"Done It A-Purpose. "

At Greeley a young man with a faded cardigan jacket and a look of woe goton the train, and as the car was a little crowded he sat in the seat withme. He had that troubled and anxious expression that a rural young manwears when he first rides on the train. When the engine whistled he wouldalmost jump out of that cardigan jacket, and then he would look kind offoolish, like a man who allows his impulses to get the best of him. Mosteveryone noticed the young man and his cardigan jacket, for the latter hadarrived at the stage of droopiness and jaded-across-the-shoulders lookthat the cheap knit jacket of commerce acquires after awhile, and it hadshrunken behind and stretched out in front so that the horizon, as youstood behind the young man, seemed to be bound by the tail of thisgarment, which started out at the pocket with good intentions and suddenlydecided to rise above the young man's shoulder blades. 

He seemed so diffident and so frightened among strangers, that I began totalk with him. 

"Do you live at Greeley?" I inquired. 

"No, sir, " he said, in an embarrassed way, as most anyone might in thepresence of greatness. "I live on a ranch up the Pandre. I was just atGreeley to see the circus. "

I thought I would play the tenderfoot and inquiring pilgrim from thecultured East, so I said: "You do not see the circus often in the West, Ipresume, the distance is so great between towns and the cost oftransportation is so great?"

"No, sir. This is the first circus I ever was to. I have never saw acircus before. "

"How did you like it?"

"O, tip-top. It was a good thing. I'd like to see it every day if I could, I laughed and drank lemonade till I've got my cloze all pinned up withpins, and I'd as soon tell you, if you wont give it away, that my pants istied on me with barbed fence wire. "

"Probably that's what gives you that anxious and apprehensive look?"

"Yes, sir. If I look kind of doubtless about something, its because I'mafraid my pantaloons will fall off on the floor and I will have to borrowa roller towel to wear home. "

"How did you like the animals?"

"I liked that part of the Great Moral Aggregation the best of all. I havenot saw such a sight before. I could stand there and watch that there oldscaly elephant stuff hay into his bosom with his long rubber nose forhours. I'd read a good deal first and last about the elephant, the king ofbeasts, but I had never yet saw one. Yesterday father told me there hadn'tbeen much joy into my young life, and so he gave me a dollar and told meto go over to the circus and have a grand time. I tell you, I just turnedmyself loose and gave myself up to pleasure. "

[Illustration: I WAS A POOR CONVERSATIONALIST. ]

"What other animals seemed to please you?" I asked, seeing that he wasgetting a little freer to talk. 

"Oh, I saw the blue-nosed baboon from Farther India, and the red-eyedsandhill crane from Maddygasker, I think it was, and the sacredJack-rabbit from Scandihoovia, and the lop-eared layme from South America. Then there was the female acrobat with her hair tied up with red ribbon. It's funny about them acrobat wimmen. They get big pay, but they never buycloze with their money. Now, the idea of a woman that gets $2 or $3 a day, for all I know, coming out there before 2, 000 total strangers, wearing apair of Indian war clubs and a red ribbon in her hair. I tell you, pardner, them acrobat prima donnars are mighty stingy with their money, orelse they're mighty economical with their cloze. "

"Did you go into the side show?"

"No, sir. I studied the oil paintings on the outside, but I didn't go in, I met a handsome looking man there near the side show, though, that seemedto take an interest in me. There was a lottery along with the show and hewanted me to go and throw for him. "

"Capper, probably?"

"Perhaps so. Anyhow, he gave me a dollar and told me to go and throw forhim. "

"Why didn't he throw for himself?"

"O, he said the lottery man knew him and wouldn't let him throw. "

"Of course. Same old story. He saw you were a greeney and got you to throwfor him. He stood in with the game so that you drew a big prize for thecapper, created a big excitement, and you and the crowd sailed in and lostall the money you had. I'll bet he was a man with a velvet coat, and amoustache dyed a dead black and waxed as sharp as a cambric needle. "

"Yes; that's his description to a dot. I wonder if he really did do thata-purpose. "

"Well, tell us about it. It does me good to hear a blamed fool tell how helost his money. Don't you see that your awkward ways and general greennessstruck the capper the first thing, and you not only threw away your ownmoney, but two or three hundred other wappy-jawed pelicans saw you draw abig prize and thought it was yours, then they deposited what little theyhad and everything was lovely. "

"Well, I'll tell you how it was, if it'll do any good and save other youngmen in the future. You see this capper, as you call him, gave me a $1 billto throw for him, and I put it into my vest pocket so, along with thedollar bill father gave me. I always carry my money in my right hand vestpocket. Well, I sailed up to the game, big as old Jumbo himself, and put adollar into the game. As you say, I drawed a big prize, $20 and a silvercup. The man offered me $5 for the cup and I took it. "

"Then it flashed over my mind that I might have got my dollar and theother feller's mixed, so I says to the proprietor, 'I will now invest adollar for a gent who asked me to draw for him. '

"Thereupon I took out the other dollar, and I'll be eternally chastised ifI didn't draw a brass locket worth about two bits a bushel. "

I didn't say anything for a long time. Then I asked him how the capperacted when he got his brass locket. 

"Well, he seemed pained and grieved about something, and he asked me if Ihadn't time to go away into a quiet place where we could talk it over byourselves; but he had a kind of a cruel, insincere look in his eye, and Isaid no, I believed I didn't care to, and that I was a poorconversationalist, anyhow; and so I came away, and left him looking at hisbrass locket and kicking holes in the ground and using profane language. 

"Afterward I saw him talking to the proprietor of the lottery, and I feel, somehow, that they had lost confidence in me. I heard them speak of me ina jeering tone of voice, and one said as I passed by: 'There goes themeek-eyed rural convict now, ' and he used a horrid oath at the same time. 

"If it hadn't been for that one little quincidence, there would have beennothing to mar the enjoyment of the occasion. "

Picnic Incidents. 

Camping out in summer for several weeks is a good thing generally. Freedomfrom social restraint and suspenders is a great luxury for a time, andnothing purifies the blood quicker, or makes a side of bacon taste morelike snipe on toast, than the crisp ozone that floats through the hillsand forests where man can monkey o'er the green grass without violating acity ordinance. 

The picnic is an aggravation. It has just enough of civilization to be anuisance, and not enough barbarism to make life seem a luxury. If our aimbe to lean up against a tree all day in a short seersucker coat and dittopantaloons that segregated while we were festooning the hammock, thepicnic is the thing. If we desire to go home at night with a jellysymphony on each knee and a thousand-legged worm in each ear, we may lookupon the picnic as a success. 

But to those who wish to forget the past and live only in the boomingpresent, to get careless of gain and breathe brand-new air that has neverbeen used, to appease an irritated liver, or straighten out a torpid lung, let me say, pick out a high, dry clime, where there are trout enough togive you an excuse for going there, take what is absolutely necessary andno more, and then stay there long enough to have some fun. 

If we picnic, we wear ourselves out trying to have a good time, so that wecan tell about it when we get back, but we do not actually get acquaintedwith each other before we have to quit and return. 

To camp, is to change the whole programme of life, and to stop long enoughin the never-ending conflict for dollars and distinction, to get a fullbreath and look over the field. Still, it is not always smooth sailing. Tocamp, is sometimes to show the material of which we are made. The dude athome is the dude in camp, and wherever he goes he demonstrates that he wasmade for naught. I do not know what a camping party would do with a dudeunless they used him to bait a bear trap with, and even then it would betaking a mean advantage of the bear. The bear certainly has some rightswhich we are bound in all decency to respect. 

James Milton Sherrod said he had a peculiar experience once while he wasin camp on the Poudre in Colorado. 

"We went over from Larmy, " said he, "in July, eight years ago--four of us. There was me and Charcoal Brown, and old Joe and young Joe Connoy. We hadjust got comfortably down on the Lower Fork, out of the reach of everybodyand sixty miles from a doctor, when Charcoal Brown got sick. Wa'al we hada big time of it. You can imagine yourself somethin' about it. Long in thenight Brown began to groan and whoop and holler, and I made a diagnosis ofhim. He didn't have much sand anyhow. He was tryin' to git a pension fromthe government on the grounds of desertion and failure to provide, andsome such a blame thing or another, so I didn't feel much sympathy furhim. But when I lit the gas and examined him, I found that he had a largefever on hand, and there we was without a doggon thing in the house but ajug of emigrant whiskey and a paper of condition powders fur the mule. Iwas a good deal rattled at first to know what the dickens to do fur him. The whiskey wouldn't do him any good, and, besides, if he was goin' tohave a long spell of sickness we needed it for the watchers. 

[Illustration: MAKING USE OF A DUDE. ]

"Wa'al, it was rough. I'd think of a thousand things that was good furfevers, and then I'd remember that we hadn't got 'em. Finally old Joe saysto me, 'James, why don't ye soak his feet?' says he. 'Soak nuthin', ' saysI; 'what would ye soak 'em in?' We had a long-handle frying-pan, and wecould heat water in it, of course, but it was too shaller to do any good, anyhow; so we abandoned that synopsis right off. First I thought I'd trythe condition powders in him, but I hated to go into a case and prescribeso recklessly. Finally I thought of a case of rheumatiz that I had up inBitter Creek years ago, and how the boys filled their socks full of hotashes and put 'em all over me till it started the persbyterian all over meand I got over it. So we begun to skirmish around the tent for socks, andI hope I may be tee-totally skun if there was a blame sock in the wholesyndicate. Ez fur me, I never wore 'em, but I did think young Joe would befixed. He wasn't though. Said he didn't want to be considered proud andhigh strung, so he left his socks at home. 

[Illustration: CHARCOAL BROWN'S REPROACHES. ]

"Then we begun to look around and finally decided that Brown would diepretty soon if we didn't break up the fever, so we concluded to take allthe ashes under the camp-fire, fill up his cloze, which was loose, tie hissleeves at the wrists, and his pants at the ankles, give him a dash ofcondition powders and a little whiskey to take the taste out of his mouth, and then see what ejosted nature would do. 

"So we stood Brown up agin a tree and poured hot ashes down his back tillhe begun to fit his cloze pretty quick, and then we laid him down in thetent and covered him up with everything we had in our humble cot. Everything worked well till he begun to perspirate, and then there wasmusic, and don't you forget it. That kind of soaked the ashes, don't yousee, and made a lye that would take the peelin' off a telegraph pole. 

"Charcoal Brown jest simply riz up and uttered a shrill whoop that jarredthe geology of Colorado, and made my blood run cold. The goose flesh rizon old Joe Connoy till you could hang your hat on him anywhere. It wasawful. 

"Brown stood up on his feet, and threw things, and cussed us till we feltashamed of ourselves. I've seen sickness a good deal in my time, but--Igive it to you straight--I never seen an invalid stand up in theloneliness of the night, far from home and friends, with the concentratedlye oozin' out of the cracks of his boots, and reproach people the wayCharcoal Brown did us. 

"He got over it, of course, before Christmas, but he was a different manafter that. I've been out campin' with him a good many times sence, but henever complained of feelin' indisposed. He seemed to be timid abouttellin' us even if he was under the weather, and old Joe Connoy said mebbeBrown was afraid we would prescribe fur him or sumthin'. "

Nero. 

Nero, who was a Roman Emperor from 54 to 68 A. D. , was said to have beenone of the most disagreeable monarchs to meet that Rome ever had. He was anephew of Culigula, the Emperor, on his mother's side, and a son ofDominitius Ahenobarbust, of St. Lawrence county. The above was reallyNero's name, but in the year 50, A. D. , his mother married Claudius andher son adopted the name of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. Thisname he was in the habit of wearing during the cold weather, buttoned upin front. During the hot weather, Nero was all the name he wore. In 53, Nero married Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and went right tohousekeeping. Nero and Octavia did not get along first-rate. Nero soonwearied of his young wife and finally transferred her to the NewJerusalem. 

In 54, Nero's mother, by concealing the rightful heir to the throne forseveral weeks and doctoring the returns, succeeded in getting the steadyjob of Emperor for Nero at a good salary. 

His reign was quite stormy and several long, bloody wars were carried onduring that period. He was a good vicarious fighter and could successfullyhold a man's coat all day, while the man went to the front to get killed. He loved to go out riding over the battle fields, as soon as it was safe, in his gorgeously bedizened band chariot and he didn't care if the wheelsrolled in gore up to the hub, providing it was some other man's gore. Itgave him great pleasure to drive about over the field of carnage and gloatover the dead. Nero was not a great success as an Emperor, but as agloater he has no rival in history. 

Nero's reign was characterized, also, by the great conflagration and Romanfireworks of July, 64, by which two-thirds of the city of Rome wasdestroyed. The emperor was charged with starting this fire in order to getthe insurance on a stock of dry goods on Main street. 

Instead of taking off his crown, hanging it up in the hall and helping toput out the fire, as other Emperors have done time and again, Nero tookhis violin up stairs and played, "I'll Meet You When the Sun Goes Down. "This occasioned a great deal of adverse criticism on the part of those whoopposed the administration. Several persons openly criticised Nero'spolicy and then died. 

A man in those days, would put on his overcoat in the morning and tell hiswife not to keep dinner waiting. "I am going down town to criticise theEmperor a few moments, " he would say. "If I do not get home in time fordinner, meet me on the 'evergreen shore. '"

Nero, after the death of Octavia, married Poppaea Sabina. She diedafterward at her husband's earnest solicitation. Nero did not care so muchabout being a bridegroom, but the excitement of being a widower alwaysgratified and pleased him. 

He was a very zealous monarch and kept Rome pretty well stirred up duringhis reign. If a man failed to show up anywhere on time, his friends wouldlook sadly at each other and say, "Alas, he has criticised Nero. "

A man could wrestle with the yellow fever, or the small-pox, or theAsiatic cholera and stand a chance for recovery, but when he spokesarcastically of Nero, it was good-bye John. 

When Nero decided that a man was an offensive partisan, that man wouldgenerally put up the following notice on his office door:

"Gone to see the Emperor in relation to charge of offensive partisanship. Meet me at the cemetery at 2 o'clock. "

Finally, Nero overdid this thing and ran it into the ground. He did notwant to be disliked and so, those who disliked him were killed. This madepeople timid and muzzled the press a good deal. 

The Roman papers in those days were all on one side. They did not dare tobe fearless and outspoken, for fear that Nero would take out his ad. Sothey would confine themselves to the statement that: "The genial andurbane Afranius Burrhus had painted his new and _recherche_ picket fencelast week, " or "Our enterprising fellow townsman, Caesar Kersikes, willremove the tail of his favorite bulldog next week, if the weather shouldbe auspicious, " or "Miss Agrippina Bangoline, eldest daughter of RomulusBangoline, the great Roman rinkist, will teach the school at Eupatorium, Trifoliatum Holler, this summer. She is a highly accomplished young lady, and a good speller. "

Nero got more and more fatal as he grew older, and finally the Romansbegan to wonder whether he would not wipe out the Empire before he died. His back yard was full all the time of people who had dropped in to bekilled, so that they could have it off their minds. 

Finally, Nero himself yielded to the great strain that had been placedupon him and, in the midst of an insurrection in Gaul, Spain and Romeitself, he fled and killed himself. 

The Romans were very grateful for Nero's great crowning act in the killingline, but they were dissatisfied because he delayed it so long, andtherefore they refused to erect a tall monument over his remains. Whilethey admired the royal suicide and regarded it as a success, they censuredNero's negligence and poor judgment in suiciding at the wrong end of hisreign. 

I have often wondered what Nero would have done if he had been Emperor ofthe United States for a few weeks and felt as sensitive to newspapercriticism as he seems to have been. Wouldn't it be a picnic to see Nerocross the Jersey ferry to kill off a few journalists who had adverselycriticised his course? The great violin virtuoso and light weight Romantyrant would probably go home by return mail, wrapped in tinfoil, accompanied by a note of regret from each journalist in New York, closingwith the remark, that "in the midst of life we are in death, therefore nowis the time to subscribe. "

Squaw Jim. 

"Jim, you long-haired, backslidden Caucasian nomad, why don't you saysomething? Brace up and tell us your experience. Were you kidnapped whenyou were a kid and run off into the wild wickyup of the forest, or how wasit that you came to leave the Yankee reservation and eat the raw dog ofthe Sioux?"

We were all sitting around the roaring fat-pine fire at the foot of thecanon, and above us the full moon was filling the bottom of the blacknotch in the mountains, where God began to engrave the gulch that grewwider and deeper till it reached the valley where we were. 

Squaw Jim was tall, silent and grave. He was as dignified as the king ofclubs, and as reticent as the private cemetery of a deaf and dumb asylum. He didn't move when Dutch Joe spoke to him, but he noticed the remark, andafter awhile got up in the firelight, and later on the silent savage madethe longest speech of his life. 

[Illustration: "BOYS, YOU CALL ME SQUAW JIM. "]

"Boys, you call me Squaw Jim, and you call my girl a half breed. I have noother name than Squaw Jim with the pale faced dude and the dyspeptic skypilot who tells me of his God. You call me Squaw Jim because I've marrieda squaw and insist on living with her. If I had marriedMist-of-the-Waterfall, and had lived in my tepee with her summers, andwintered at St. Louis with a wife who belonged to a tall peaked church, and who wore her war paint, and her false scalp-lock, and her false heartinto God's wigwam, I'd be all right, probably. They would have laughedabout it a little among the boys, but it would have been "wayno" in thebig stone lodges at the white man's city. 

"I loved a pale faced girl in Connecticut forty years ago. She said shedid me, but she met with a change of heart and married a bare-back riderin a circus. Then she ran away with the sword swallower of the side show, and finally broke her neck trying to walk the tight rope. The jury said ifthe rope had been as tight as she was it might have saved her life. 

"Since then I've been where the sun and the air and the soil were free. Itkind of soothed me to wear moccasins and throw my biled shirt into theMissouri. It took the fever of jealousy and disappointment out of my soulto sleep in the great bosom of the unhoused night. Soon I learned how toparley-vous in the Indian language, and to wear the clothes of the redman. I married the squaw girl who saved me from the mountain fever and myfoes. She did not yearn for the equestrian of the white man's circus. Shedidn't know how to raise XxYxZ to the nth power, but she was a wife worthyof the President of the United States. She was way off the trail inmatters of etiquette, but she didn't know what it was to envy and hate thepale faced squaw with the sealskin sacque and the torpid liver, and thehigh-priced throne of grace. She never sighed to go where they are fillingup Connecticut's celestial exhibit with girls who get mysteriouslymurdered and the young men who did it go out lecturing. You see I keepposted. 

"Boys, you kind of pity me, I reckon, and say Squaw Jim might have been inCongress if he'd stayed with his people and wore night shirts and paredhis claws, but you needn't. 

"My wife can't knock the tar out of a symphony on the piano, but she canmop the dew off the grass with a burglar, and knock out a dude's eyes atsixty yards rise. 

"My wife is a little foggy on the winter style of salvation, and probablyyou'd stall her on how to drape a silk velvet overskirt so it wouldn'thang one-sided, but she has a crude idea of an every day, all wool GeneralSuperintendent of the Universe and Father of all-Humanity, whether theylive under a horse blanket tepee or a Gothic mortgage. She might look outof place before the cross, with her chilblains and her childlikeconfidence, among the Tom cat sealskin sacques of your camel's hairChristianity, but if the world was supplied with Christians like my wife, purgatory would make an assignment, and the Salvation Army would go homeand hoe corn. Sabe?"

Squaw Jim's Religion. 

Referring to religious matters, the other day, Squaw Jim said: "I was upat the Post yesterday to kind of rub up against royalty, and refresh mymemory with a few papers. I ain't a regular subscriber to any paper, for Ican't always get my mail on time. We're liable to be here, there andeverywhere, mebbe at some celebrated Sioux watering place and mebbe on thewarpath, so I can't rely on the mails much, but I manage, generally, toget hold of a few old papers and magazines now and then. I don't alwaysknow who's president before breakfast the day after election, but I manageto skirmish around and find out before his term expires. 

"Now, speaking about the religion of the day, or, rather, the place whereit used to be, it seems to me as if there's a mistake somewhere. It looksas if religion meant greenness, and infidelity meant science andsmartness, according to the papers. I'm no scientist myself. I don't knowevolution from the side of a house. As an evolver I couldn't earn myboard, probably, and I wouldn't know a protoplasm from a side of soleleather; but I know when I get to the end of my picket rope, and I knowjust as sure where the knowable quits and the unknowable begins asanybody. I mean I can crawl into a prairie dog hole, and pull the hole inand put it in my pocket, in my poor, weak way, just as well as a scientistcan. If a man offered to trade me a spavined megatherium for a founderedhypothesis, I couldn't know enough about either of the blamed brutes totrade and make a profit. I never run around after delightful worms andeccentric caterpillers. I have so far controlled myself and escaped thehabit, but I am able to arrive at certain conclusions. You think thatbecause I am the brother-in-law to an Indian outbreak, I don't carewhether Zion languishes or not; but you are erroneous. You make a verycommon mistake. 

"Mind you, I don't pretend to be up on the plan of salvation, and so faras vicarious atonement goes, I don't even know who is the author of it, but I've got a kind of hand-made religion that suits me. It's cheap, andportable, and durable, and stands our severe northern climate first rate. It ain't the protuberant kind. It don't protrude into other people's waylike a sore thumb. All-wool religion don't go around with a chip on it'sshoulder looking for a personal deal. 

"If I had time and could move my library around with me during our summertour, I might monkey with speculative science and expose the plan ofcreation, but as it is now, I really haven't time. 

[Illustration: MOVING HIS LIBRARY. ]

"I say this, however, friends, Romans and backsliders: I think sometimeswhen my little half-breed girl comes to me in the evening in her nightdress, and kneels by me with her little brown face in between my knees, and with my hard hands in her unbraided hair, that she's got somethingbetter than speculative science when she says:

 'Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take: This I ask for Jesus' sake;'

"and I know that a million more little angels are saying that same thing, at that same hour, to the same imaginary God, I say to myself, if that isa vain, empty infatuation, blessed be that holy infatuation. 

"If that's a wild and crazy delusion, let me be always deluded. If fortymillions of chubby little angels bow their dimpled knees every evening toa false and foolish tradition, let me do so, too. If I die, then I will bein good company, even if I go no farther than the clouds of the valley. "

One Kind of Fool. 

A young man, with a plated watch-chain that would do to tie up a sacredelephant, came into Denver the other day from the East, on the JulesburgShort line, and told the hotel clerk that he had just returned fromEurope, and was on his way across the continent with the intention ofpublishing a book of international information. He handed an oilcloth gripacross the counter, registered in a bold, bad way and with a flourish thatscattered the ink all over the clerk's white shirt front. 

He was assigned to a quiet room on the fifth floor, that had been damagedby water a few weeks before by the fire department. After an hour or twospent in riding up and down the elevator and ringing for things thatdidn't cost anything, he oiled his hair and strolled into the dining-roomwith a severe air and sat down opposite a big cattle man, who never oiledhis hair or stuck his nose into other people's business. 

The European traveler entered into conversation with the cattle man. Hetold him all about Paris and the continent, meanwhile polishing his handson the tablecloth and eating everything within reach. While he ate anotherman's dessert, he chatted on gaily about Cologne and pitied the cattle manwho had to stay out on the bleak plains and watch the cows, while otherspaddled around Venice and acquired information in a foreign land. 

At first the cattle man showed some interest in Europe, but after awhilehe grew quiet and didn't seem to enjoy it. Later on the European tourist, with soiled cuffs and auburn mane, ordered the waiters around in amajestic way, to impress people with his greatness, tipped over thevinegar cruet into the salt and ate a slice of boiled egg out of anotherman's salad. 

Casually a tall Kansas man strolled in and asked the European tourist whathe was doing in Denver. The cattle man, who, by the way, has been abroadfive or six times and is as much at home in Paris as he is in Omaha, investigated the matter, and learned that the fresh French tourist hadbeen herding hens on a chicken ranch in Kansas for six years, and hadnever seen blue water. He then took a few personal friends to thedining-room door, and they watched the alleged traveler. He had just takena long, refreshing drink from the finger bowl of his neighbor on the leftand was at that moment, trying to scoop up a lump of sugar with the wrongend of the tongs. 

There are a good many fools who drift around through the world and dodgethe authorities, but the most disastrous ass that I know is the man whogoes West with two dollars and forty cents in his pocket, without brainsenough to soil the most delicate cambric handkerchief, and tries to playhimself for a savant with so much knowledge that he has to shedinformation all the time to keep his abnormal knowledge from hurting him. 

John Adams' Diary. 

December 3, 1764. --I am determined to keep a diary, if possible, the restof my life. I fully realize how difficult it will be to do so. Many othersof my acquaintance have endeavored to maintain a diary, but have onlyadvanced so far as the second week in January. It is my purpose to writedown each evening the events of the day as they occur to my mind, in orderthat in a few years they may be read and enjoyed by my family. I shall tryto deal truthfully with all matters that I may refer to in these pages, whether they be of national or personal interest, and I shall seek toavoid anything bitter or vituperative, trying rather to cool my temperbefore I shall submit my thoughts to paper. 

[Illustration: "WHERE'S THE PIE?"]

December 4. --This morning we have had trouble with the hired girl. Itoccurred in this wise: We had fully two-thirds of a pumpkin pie that hadbeen baked in a square tin. This major portion of the pie was left overfrom our dinner yesterday, and last night, before retiring to rest, Idesired my wife to suggest something in the cold pie line, which she did. I lit a candle and explored the pantry in vain. The pie was no longervisible. I told Mrs. Adams that I had not been successful, whereupon wesought out the hired girl, whose name is Tootie Tooterson, a foreigndamsel, who landed in this country Nov. 7, this present year. She does notunderstand our language, apparently, especially when we refer to pie. Theonly thing she does without a strong foreign accent is to eat pumpkin pieand draw her salary. She landed on our coast six weeks ago, after atedious voyage across the heaving billows. It was a close fight betweenTootie and the ocean, but when they quit, the heaving billows were oneheave ahead by the log. 

Miss Tooterson landed in Massachusetts in a woolen dress and hollow cleardown into the ground. A strong desire to acquire knowledge and cold, hand-made American pie seems to pervade her entire being. 

She has only allowed Mrs. Adams and myself to eat what she did not wantherself. 

Miss Tooterson has also introduced into my household various Europeaneccentricities and strokes of economy which deserve a brief notice here. Among other things she has made pie crust with castor oil in it, andlubricated the pancake griddle with a pork rind that I had used on my lameneck. She is thrifty and saving in this way, but rashly extravagant in theuse of doughnuts, pie and Medford rum, which we keep in the house forvisitors who are so unfortunate as to be addicted to the doughnut, pie orrum habit. 

It is discouraging, indeed, for two young people like Mrs. Adams andmyself, who have just begun to keep house, to inherit a famine, and such arobust famine, too. It is true that I should not have set my heart uponsuch a transitory and evanescent terrestrial object like a pumpkin pie sonear to T. Tooterson, imported pie soloist, doughnut mastro and femininevirtuoso, but I did, and so I returned from the pantry desolate. 

[Illustration: A PIE SOLOIST. ]

I told Abigail that unless we poisoned a few pies for Tootie the Adamsfamily would be a short-lived race. I could see with my prophetic eye thatunless the Tootersons yielded the Adamses would be wiped out. Abigailwould not consent to this, but decided to relieve Miss Tooterson from dutyin this department, so this morning she went away. Not being at allfamiliar with the English language, she took four of Abigail's sheets andquite a number of towels, handkerchiefs and collars. She also erroneouslytook a pair of my night-shirts in her poor, broken way. Being entirelyignorant of American customs, I presume that she will put a belt aroundthem and wear them externally to church. I trust that she will not dothis, however, without mature deliberation. 

[Illustration: IGNORANT OF AMERICAN CUSTOMS. ]

I also had a bottle of lung medicine of a very powerful nature which thedoctor had prepared for me. By some oversight, Miss Tooterson drank thisthe first day that she was in our service. This was entirely wrong, as Idid not intend to use it for the foreign trade, but mostly for homeconsumption. 

This is a little piece of drollery that I thought of myself. I do notthink that a joke impairs the usefulness of a diary, as some do. A diarywith a joke in it is just as good to fork over to posterity as one that isnot thus disfigured. In fact, what has posterity ever done for me that Ishould hesitate about socking a little humor into a diary? When hasposterity ever gone out of its way to do me a favor? Never! I defy thehistorian to show a single instance where posterity has ever been thefirst to recognize and remunerate ability. 

John Adams' Diary. (No. 2. )

December 6. --It is with great difficulty that I write this entry in mydiary, for this morning Abigail thought best for me to carry the oleanderdown into the cellar, as the nights have been growing colder of late. 

I do not know which I dislike most, foreign usurpation or the oleander. Ihave carried that plant up and down stairs every time the weather haschanged, and the fickle elements of New England have kept me rising andfalling with the thermometer, and whenever I raised or fell I most alwayshad that scrawny oleander in my arms. 

Richly has it repaid us, however, with its long, green, limber branchesand its little yellow nubs on the end. How full of promises to the eyethat are broken to the heart. The oleander is always just about to meetits engagements, but later on it peters out and fails to materialize. 

I do not know what we would do if it were not for our house plants. Everyfall I shall carry them cheerfully down cellar, and in the spring I willbring up the pots for Mrs. Adams to weep softly into. Many a night at thespecial instance and request of my wife I have risen, clothed in onesimple, clinging garment, to go and see if the speckled, double andtwisted Rise-up-William-Riley geranium was feeling all right. 

Last summer Abigail brought home a slip of English ivy. I do not likethings that are English very much, but I tolerated this little sicklything because it seemed to please Abigail. I asked her what were thesalient features of the English ivy. What did the English ivy do? Whatmight be its specialty? Mrs. Adams said that it made a specialty ofclimbing. It was a climber from away back. "All right, " I then to her didstraightway say, "let her climb. " It was a good early climber. It climbedhigher than Jack's beanstalk. It climbed the golden stair. Most of ourplants are actively engaged in descending the cellar stairs or inascending the golden stair most all the time. 

I descended the stairs with the oleander this morning, though the oleandergot there a little more previously than I did. Parties desiring a good, secondhand oleander tub, with castors on it, will do well to give us acall before going elsewhere. Purchasers desiring a good set of second-handear muffs for tulips will find something to their advantage by addressingthe subscriber. 

We also have two very highly ornamental green dogoods for ivy vines toramble over. We could be induced to sell these dogoods at a sacrifice, inorder to make room for our large stock of new and attractive dogoods. These articles are as good as ever. We bought them during the panic lastfall for our vines to climb over, but, as our vines died of membranouscroup in November, these dogoods still remain unclum. Second-hand dirtalways on hand. Ornamental geranium stumps at bed-rock prices. Highestcash prices paid for slips of black-and-tan foliage plants. We areheadquarters for the century plant that draws a salary for ninety-nineyears and then dies. 

I do not feel much like writing in my diary to-day, but the physician saysthat my arm will be better in a day or two, so that it will be more of apleasure to do business. 

We are still without a servant girl, so I do some of the cooking. I make afire each day and boil the teakettle. People who have tried my boiledteakettle say it is very fine. 

Some of my friends have asked me to run for the Legislature here nextelection. Somehow I feel that I might, in public life, rise to distinctionsome day, and perhaps at some future time figure prominently in theaffairs of a one-horse republic at a good salary. 

I have never done anything in the statesman line, but it does not lookdifficult to me. It occurs to me that success in public life is the resultof a union of several great primary elements, to-wit:

Firstly--Ability to whoop in a felicitous manner. 

Secondly--Promptness in improving the proper moment in which to whoop. 

Thirdly--Ready and correct decision in the matter of which side to whoopon. 

Fourthly--Ability to cork up the whoop at the proper moment and keep it ina cool place till needed. 

And this last is one of the most important of all. It is the amateurstatesman who talks the most. Fearing that he will conceal his identity asa fool, he babbles in conversation and slashes around in his shallow banksin public. 

As soon as I get the house plants down cellar and get their overshoes onfor the winter, I will more seriously consider the question of ourpolitical affairs here in this new land where we have to tie our scalps onat night and where every summer is an Indian summer. 

John Adams' Diary(No. 3. )

December 10. --I have put in a long and exhausting day in the court to-dayin the case of Merkins vs. Merkins, a suit for divorce in which I am thecounsel for the plaintiff, Eliza J. Merkins. 

The case itself is a peculiarly trying one, and the plaintiff adds to itshorrors by consulting me when I want to do something else. I took her caseat an agreed price, and so Mrs. Merkins is trying to get her money's worthby consulting me in a way I abhor. She has consulted me in every mood andtense that I know of; at my office, on the street, in church, at thefestive board and at different funerals to which we both happened to becalled. Mrs. Merkins has hung like a pall over several Massachusettsfunerals which otherwise had every symptom of success. 

I am a great admirer of woman as a woman, but as a client in a suit fordivorce she has her peculiarities. I have seen Eliza in every phase of thecase. She has been calm and tearful, stormy and snorting, low-spirited andred-nosed, violent and menacing, resigned but sobby, trustful andconfidential, high strung and haughty, crushed and weepy. 

She makes a specialty of shedding the red-hot scalding tear wherever shecan obtain permission to do so. She has wept in my wood-box, in my newspittoon, on my desk and on my birthday. I told her that I wished shewould please weep on something else. There were enough objects in natureupon which a poor woman who wept constantly and had no other visible meansof support could shed the wild torrents of her grief, without weeping onmy anniversary. A man wants to keep his birthday as dry as possible. Hehates to have it wept on by a client who has jewed him down to half price, and then insisted on coming in to sob with him in the morning before hehas swept the office floor. 

One time she came and sobbed on my shoulder. Her tears are of the warm, damp kind, and feel disagreeable as they roll down the neck of acomparative stranger, who never can be aught but a friend. She rested herbonnet on my bosom while she wept, and I then discovered that she has beenin the habit of wearing this bonnet while cooking her buckwheat pancakes. I presume she keeps her bonnet on all the time, so that she may be readyto dash out and consult me at all times without delay. Still, she oughtnot to do it, for when she leans her head on the bosom of her counsel inorder to consult him, he detects the odor of the early sausage and thefleeting pancake. 

 You may bust such a bonnet and crush it if you will, But the scent of the pancake will cling round it still. 

As soon as I saw that her object was to lean up against me and not onlyconvulse herself with sobs, but that she intended to jar me also with hergreat woe, I told her that I would have to request her to avaunt. I then, as she did not act upon my suggestion, avaunted her myself. I avaunted herinto a chair with a sickening thud. 

[Illustration: A TENDER CASE. ]

She then burst forth in a torrent of vituperation. When the abnormalsobber is suddenly corked up, these sobs rankle in the system and burstforth in the shape of vituperation. In the course of her remarks, shestated in a violent manner that she would denounce me throughout thecountry and retain other counsel. I told her I wished she would, as mysympathies were with Mr. Merkins. I told her that she must either pay me alarger fee or I should insist on her weeping in the alley before she cameup. 

She then took her departure with a rising inflection. On the followingday, however, I found her at the office door, and she stood near andconsulted me again, while I took up the ashes and started a fire in thestove. 

Her case is quite peculiar. 

She wants a divorce from her husband on the grounds of cruelty to animals, or something of that kind, and when she first told me about it I thoughtshe had a case, but when we came to trial I found that she had had everyreason to believe that if she could be segregated from Mr. Merkins shecould at once become the bride of a gentleman who ploughed the ragingmain. 

Just as we went to the jury to-day with the case, she heard casually thatthe gentleman who had been in the main-ploughing business had just marriedwithout her knowledge or consent. 

"Heap Brain. "

Much trouble has been done by a long haired phrenologist in the West whohas, during his life, felt of over a hundred thousand heads. A comparisonof a large number of charts given in these cases shows that so far no headexamined would indicate anything less than a member of the lower house ofcongress. Artists, orators, prima-donnas and statesmen are plenty, butthere are no charts showing the natural-born farmer, carpenter, shoemakeror chambermaid. 

That is the reason butter is so high west of the Missouri river to-day, while genius actually runs riot. 

What this day and age of the world needs, is a phrenologist who will pawaround among the intellectual domes of free-born American citizens, andsearch out a few men who can milk a cow in a cool and unimpassioned toneof voice. 

It is true that every man in America is a sovereign, but he had better notoverdo it. The man who sits up nights to be a sovereign and allows thecalves to eat his brown-eyed beans, is not leading his fellow men up to ahigher and nobler life. The sovereign business can be run in the ground ifwe are not careful. 

[Illustration: A FUTURE PRESIDENT. ]

Very likely the white-eyed boy with the hickory dado along the base of hisoveralls is the boy who in future years is to be the president of theUnited States. But do not, oh, do not trow, fair young reader, that everyAlbino youth in our broad land who wears an isosceles triangle in navyblue flannel athwart his system, is going to be the chief magistrate ofthis mighty republic. 

We need statesmen and orators and artists very much; but the world at thismoment also needs several athletic parties with the horse-sense adequateto produce flour and other vegetables necessary to feed the aforesaidstatesmen, orators, etc. , etc. 

Let me say a word to the bright-eyed youth of America, Let me murmur inyour ear this never dying truth: When a long-haired crank asks you adollar to tell you, you are a young Demosthenes, stand up and lookyourself over at a distance before you swallow it all. 

There is no use talking, we have got to procure provisions in some manner, and in order to do so the natural-born bone and muscle of the country mustgo at and promote the growth of such things, or else we artists, poets andstatesmen, will have to take off our standing collars and do it ourselves. 

Phrenology is a good thing, no doubt, if we can purify it. So long as itdoes not become the slave of capital, there is nothing about phrenologythat is going to do harm; but when it becomes the creature of the tradedollar, it looks as though the country would be filled up with wild-eyedgenius that hasn't had a square meal for two weeks. The time will surelycome when America will demand less statesmanship and more flour; when lessstatistics and a purer, nobler and more progressive style of beefsteakwill demand our attention. 

I had hoped that phrenology would step in and start this reform; but sofar it has not, within the range of my observation. It may be, however, that the mental giant bump translator with whom I came in contact was nota fair representative. Still, he has been in the business for over thirtyyears, and some of our most polished criminals have passed under hishands. 

An erroneous phrenologist once told me that I would shine as a revivalist, and said that I ought to marry a tall blonde with a nervous, sanguinarytemperament. Then he said, "One dollar, please, " and I said, "All right, gentle scientist with the tawny mane, I will give you the dollar and marrythe tall blonde with the bank account and bilious temperament, when yougive me a chart showing me how to dispose of a brown-eyed brunette with athoughtful cast of countenance, who married me in an unguarded moment twoyears ago. "

He looked at me in a reproachful kind of way, struck at me with a chair inan absent-minded manner and stole away. 

The Approaching Humorist. 

The following letter has been received, and, as it encloses no unsmirchedpostage stamp to insure a private reply, I take great pleasure inanswering it in these pages:

Christiana, Kas. , Sept. 22nd, 1884

Dear Sir. --I am studying for a Humorist. Could you help me to some of theJoliest Books that are written? With some of the best Jokes of the Day &c&c &c. 

Also what it would be best for me to do for to become an Humorist. 

I am said to be a Natural Born Humorist by my friends and all I need isCultivation to make my mark. 

Please reply by return mail. 

Kindly Yours

Herman A. H. 

For some time I have been grieving over the dearth of humor in America, and wondering who the great coming humorist was to be. Several papers havealready deplored the lack of humor in our land, but they have not beenable to put their finger on the approaching humorist of the age. Just aswe had begun to despair, however, here he comes, quietly andunostentatiously, modestly and ungrammatically. Unheralded and silently, like Maud S. Or any other eminent man, he slowly rises above the Kansashorizon, and tells us that it will be impossible to conceal his identityany longer. He is the approaching humorist of the nineteenth century. 

It is a serious matter, Herman, to prescribe a course of study that willbe exactly what you need to bring you out. Perhaps you might do well totake a Kindergarten course in spelling and the rudiments of grammar;still, that is not absolutely necessary. A friend of mine named Billingshas done well as a humorist, though his knowledge of spelling seems to bepitiably deficient. Grammar is convenient where a humorist desires to puton style or show off before crowned heads, but it is not absolutelyindispensable. 

Regarding the "Joliest Books" necessary for your perusal, in order tochisel your name on the eternal tablets of fame, tastes will certainlydiffer. I am almost sorry that you wrote to me, because we might notagree. You write like one of these "Joly" humorists such as people employto go along with a picnic and be the life of the party, and whose presencethroughout the country has been so depressing. If one may be allowed tojudge of your genius by the few autograph lines forwarded, you belong tothat class of brain-workers upon whom devolves the solemn duty of poundingsand. If you are really a brain-worker, will you kindly inform the writerwhose brain you are working now, and how you like it as far as you havegone?

American humor has burst forth from all kinds of places, nearly. Thevarious professions have done their share. One has risen from a trampuntil he is wealthy and dyspeptic, and another was blown up on a steamboatbefore he knew that he was a humorist. 

Suppose you try that, Herman. M. Quad, one of the very successfulhumorists of the day, both in a literary and financial way, was blown upby a steamboat before he bloomed forth into the full flush and power ofsuccess. Try that, Herman. It is a severe test, but it is bound to be asuccess. Even if it should be disastrous to you, it will be rich in itsbeneficial results to those who escape. 

[Illustration]

What We Eat. 

On 3d street, St. Paul, there stands a restaurant that has outside as asign, under a glass case, a rib roast, a slice of ham and a roast duckthat I remembered distinctly having seen there in 1860 and before the war. I asked an epicure the other day if he thought it right to keep thosethings there year after year when so many were starving throughout thelength and breadth of the land. He then straightway did take me up closeso that I could see that the food was made of plaster and painted, ashereinbefore set forth and by me translated, as Walt Whitman would say. 

A day or two afterward, at a rural hotel, I struck some of that same roastbeef and ham. I thought that the sign had been put on the table bymistake, and I made bold to tell the proprietor about it, on the groundthat "any neglect or impertinence on the part of servants should bereported at the office. " He received the information with great rudenessand a most disagreeable air. 

There are two kinds of guests who live at the average hotel. One is theparty who gets up and walks over the whole _corps de hote_, from thebald-headed proprietor to the bootblack, while the other is the meek andmild-eyed man, doomed to sit at the table and bewail the flight of timeand the horrors of starvation while waiting for the relief party to comewith his food. 

I belong to the latter class. Born, as I was, in a private family, andearly acquiring the habit of eating food that was intended to assuagehunger mostly, it takes me a good while to accustom myself to the style ofdyspeptic microbe used simply to ornament a bill of fare. Of course it ismaintained by some hotel men that food solely for eating purposes isbecoming obsolete and _outre_, and that the stuff they put on their billsof fare is just as good to pour down the back of a guest as diet that iscooked for the common, low, perverted taste of people who have no higheraspiration than to eat their food. 

Of course the genial, urbane and talented reader will see at once thestyle of hotel I am referring to. It is the hotel that apes the good hoteland prints a bill of fare solely as a literary effort. That is the hotelwhere you find the moth-eaten towel and the bed-ridden coffee. There iswhere you get butter that runs the elevator day times and sleeps on theflannel cakes at night. 

It is there that you meet the weary and way-worn steak that bears thetoothprints of other guests who are now in a land where the early-risingchambermaid cannot enter. 

I also refer to the hotel where the bellboy is simply an animated polisherof banisters, and otherwise extremely useless. It is likewise the housewhere the syrup tastes like tincture of rhubarb, and the pancakes tastelike a hektograph. 

The traveling man will call to mind the hotel to which I refer, and hewill instantly name it and tell you that he has never spent the Sabbaththere. 

I honestly believe that some hotel men lose money and custom by trying toissue a large blanket-sheet bill of fare every day, when a more modestlist containing two or three things that a human being could eat withimpunity would be far more acceptable, healthy and remunerative. 

Some people can live on cracked wheat, bran and skimmed milk, no matterwhere they go, and so they always seem to be perfectly happy; but, whilesimplicity is my watchword, and while I am Old Simplicity himself, as itwere, I haven't been constructed with stomachs enough to successfullywrestle with these things. I like a few plain dishes with victuals onthem, cooked by a person who has had some experience in that line before. I am not so especially tied to high prices and finger-bowls, for I haverisen from the common people, and during the first eighteen years of mylife I had to dress myself. I was not always the pampered child ofenervating luxury that I now am, by any means. So I can subsist for weekson good, plain food, and never murmur or repine; but where the mistake atsome hotels seems to have been made, is in trying to issue a bill of fareevery day that will attract the attention of literary minds and excite thecuriosity of linguists instead of people who desire to assuage an internalcraving for grub. 

I use the term grub in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. 

So, if I may take the liberty to do so, let me exhort the landlord who isgradually accumulating indebtedness and remorse, to use a plainer, lesselaborate, but more edible list of refreshments. Otherwise his guests willall die young. 

Let him discard the seamless waffle and the kiln-dried hen. Let himabstain from the debris known as cottage pudding, that being its alias, while the doctors recognize it as old Gastric Disturbance. Too much of ourhotel food tastes like the second day of January or the fifth day of July. That's the whole thing in a few words, and unless the good hotels arenearer together we shall have to multiply our cemetery facilities. 

Poor hotels are responsible for lots of drunkards every year. The onlytime I am tempted to soak my sorrows in rum is after I have read adelusive bill of fare and eaten a broiled barn-hinge with gravy on it thattasted like the broth of perdition. It is then that the demon ofintemperance and colic comes to me and, in siren tones, says: "Try ourbourbon, with 'Polly Narius' on the side. "

Care of House Plants. 

Stern winter is the season in which to keep the eye peeled for the fragilelittle house plant. It is at that time that the coarse and brutal husbandcarries the Scandinavian flower known as the Ole Ander, part way down thecellar, and allows it to fall the rest of the way. I carried a large OleAndor up and down stairs for nine years, until the spring of 1880. Thatwas rather a backward spring, and a pale red cow, with one horn done up ina French twist, ate the most of it as it stood on the porch. 

[Illustration: CARRYING OUT THE OLE ANDER. ]

This cow was a total stranger to me. I had never done anything for her bywhich to win her esteem. It shows how Providence works through thehumblest means sometimes to accomplish a great good. 

I have tried many times to find the postoffice address of that lonely cow, so I might comfort her declining years, but she seemed to have melted awayinto the bosom of space, for I cannot find her. Anyone knowing thewhereabouts of a pale red cow, with one horn done up in a French twist, and wearing a look of settled melancholy, will please communicate the sameto me, as we have another Ole Ander that will just about fit her, I think, by spring. 

[Illustration: WREAKING VENGEANCE. ]

Bulbs may be wrapped in cotton and put in a cool place in the fall, andfed to the domestic animals in the spring. Geraniums should put on theirbuffalo overcoats about the middle of November in our rigid northernclime, and in the spring they will have the same luxuriant foliage as thetropical hat-rack. Vines may be left in the room during the winter untilthe furnace slips a cog and then you can pull them down and feed them tothe family horses. In changing your plants from the living rooms orelsewhere to the cellar in the fall, take great care to avoid injury tothe pot. I have experienced some very severe winters in my life, but Ihave never seen the mercury so low that a flowerpot couldn't strugglethrough and look fresh and robust in the spring. The longevity of the potis surprising when we consider how much death there is all about it. I hada large brown flower-pot once that originally held the germ of a callalily. This lily emerged from the soil with the light of immortality in itseye. It got up to where we began to be attached to it, and then it died. Then we put a plant in its place which was given us by a friend. I do notremember now what this plant was called, but I know it was sent to uswrapped up in a piece of moist brown paper, and half an hour later a draydrove up to the house with the name of the plant itself. In the summer itrequired very little care, and in the winter I would cover the littlething up with its name, and it would be safe till spring. One evening wehad a free-for-all _musicale_ at my house, and a corpulent friend of minetried to climb it, and it died. (Tried to climb the plant, not the_musicale_. ) The plant yielded to the severe climb it. This joke now makesits _debut_ for the first time before the world. Anyone who feels offendedwith this joke may wreak his vengeance on a friend of mine named Sullivan, who is passionately fond of having people wreak their vengeance on him. People having a large amount of unwreaked vengeance on hand will do wellto give him a call before purchasing elsewhere. 

A Peaceable Man. 

Will L. Visscher always made a specialty of being a peaceable man. Hewould make most any sacrifice in order to secure general amnesty. I'veknown him to go around six blocks out of his way, to avoid a stormyinterview with a belligerant dog. He was always very tender-hearted aboutdogs, especially the open-faced bulldog. 

But he had a queer experience years ago, in St. Jo, Missouri. He had beencity editor of the Kansas City _Journal_ for some time, but one evening, while in the composing-room, the foreman told him that the place for thecity editor was down stairs, in his office. He therefore ordered Visscherto go down there. Visscher said he would do so later on, after he gotfatigued with the composing-room and wanted change of scene. 

The foreman thereupon jumped on Mr. Visscher with a small pica wroughtiron side stick. Visscher allowed that he was a peaceable man, but enteredinto the general chaos of double-leaded editorial, and hair and brassdashes, and dashes for liberty and heterogeneous "pi, " and foot-sticks andteeth, with great zeal. He succeeded in putting a large doric head on theforeman, and although he was a peaceable man, he went down to the officeand got his discharge for disturbing the discipline of the office. 

He went to St. Jo the same day, and celebrated his _debut_ into the townby a little game of what is known as "draw. " He was fortunate in "fillinghis hand, " and while he was taking in the stakes, a young man fromArkansas, who was in the game, nipped a two-dollar note in a quiet kind ofway, which, however, was detected by Mr. V. , who mentioned the matter atthe time. This maddened the Arkansas man, and later on he put one of hislong arms around Mr. Visscher so as to pinion him, and then smote himacross the brow with an instrument, known to science as "the brassknucks. " This irritated Mr. Visscher, and as soon as he had returned toconsciousness he remarked that, although it was rather an up-hill job inMissouri, he was trying to be a peaceable man. He then broke the leg of acard-table over the head of the Arkansas man, and went to the doctor toget his own brow sewed on again. 

While he was sitting in the doctor's office a friend of the Arkansas mancame in and asked him to please stand up while he knocked him down. Visscher opened a little dialogue with the man, and drew him intoconversation till he could open a case of surgical instruments near by, then he took out one of those knives that the surgeons use in removing theviscera from the leading gentleman at a post mortem. 

"Now, " said he, sharpening the knife on the stove-pipe and handing down ajar containing alcohol with a tumor in it, "I am a peaceful man and don'twant any fuss; but if you insist on a personal encounter, I will slice offfragments of your physiognomy at my leisure, and for twenty minutes I willfill this office with your favorite features. I make a specialty of beinga peaceable man, remember; but if you'll just say the word, I'll putovercoat button-holes and eyelet-holes and crazy-quilts all over yoursystem. If I've got to kill off the poker-players of St. Jo before I canhave any fun, I guess I might as well begin on you as on any one I know. "

[Illustration: HE WAS A PEACEABLE MAN. ]

He then made a stab at the man and pinned his coat-tail to the door-frame. Fear loaned the bad man strength, and, splitting the coat-tail, he fled, taking little mementoes of the tumor-jar and shedding them in his flight. 

When Mr. Visscher went up to the _Herald_ office soon after to get a job, he was introduced casually to the foreman, who said:

"Ah, this is the young man who licks the foreman of the paper he works on, is it? I am glad to meet you, Mr. Visscher. I am looking for a white-eyedson of a sea-cook who goes around over Missouri thumping the foremen ofour leading journals. Come out into the ante-room, Mr. Visscher, till Ijar your back teeth loose and send you to the morgue in a gunny-sack. " Mr. Visscher repeated that he was trying to live in Missouri and be apeaceable man, but that if there was anything that he could do to make itpleasant for the foreman, he would cheerfully do it. 

Mr. Visscher was a small man, but when he felt aggrieved about anything hewas very harassing to his adversary. They "clinched" and threw each otherback and forth across the hall with great vigor. When they stopped forbreath, the foreman's coat was pulled over his head and the bosom of Mr. Visscher's shirt was hanging on the gas-jet. There were also two frontteeth on the floor unaccounted for. 

Visscher pinned on his shirt-bosom and said he was a peaceable man, but ifthe custom seemed to demand four fights in one day, he would try toconform to any local usage of the city. Wherever he went, he wanted tofall right into line and be one of the party. 

When he got well he was employed on the _Herald_, and for four yearsedited the amnesty column of the paper successfully. 

Biography of Spartacus. 

Spartacus, whose given name seems to have been torn off in its passagedown through the corridors of time, was born in Thrace and educated as ashepherd. While smearing the noses of the young lambs with tar one spring, in order to prevent the snuffies among them, he thought that he wouldbecome a robber. It occurred to him that this calling was the only one heknew of that seemed to be open to the young man without means. 

He had hardly got started, however, in the "hold up" industry, when he wascaptured by the Romans, sold at cost and trained as a gladiator, in aschool at Capua. Here he succeeded in stirring up a conspiracy and unitingtwo hundred or more of the grammar department of the school in a generalruction, as it was then termed. 

The scheme was discovered and only seventy of the number escaped, headedby Spartacus. These snatched cleavers from the butcher shops, pickets fromthe Roman fences and various other weapons, and with them fought their wayto the foot hill where they met a wagon train loaded with arms andsupplies. They secured the necessary weapons whereby to go into a generalwar business and established themselves in the crater of Mount Vesuvius. 

Spartacus was a man of wonderful carriage and great physical strength. Ithad always been his theory that a man might as well die of old age as tofeed himself to a Roman menagerie. He maintained that he would rather diein a general free fight, where he had a chance, than to be hauled aroundover the arena by one leg behind a Numidian lion. 

So he took his little band and fought his way to Vesuvius. There they hada pleasant time camping out nights and robbing the Roman's daytimes. Theexcitement of sleeping in a crater, added a wonderful charm to theirlives. While others slept cold in Capua, Spartacus cuddled up to thecrater and kept comfortable. 

For a long time the little party had it all their own way. They sniffedthe air of freedom and lived on Roman spring chicken on the half shell, and it beat the arena business all hollow. 

At last, however, an army of 3, 000 men was sent against them, andSpartacus awoke one morning to find himself blocked up in his crater. Fora time the outlook was not cheering. Spartacus thought of telegraphing thewar department for reinforcements, but finally decided not to do so. 

Finally, with ladders made of wild vines, the little garrison slipped outthrough what had seemed an impassable fissure in the crater, got in therear of the army and demolished it completely. That's the kind of man thatSpartacus was. Fighting was his forte. 

Spartacus was also a good public speaker. One of his addresses to thegladiators has been handed down to posterity through the medium of theFifth Reader, a work that should be in every household. In his speech hestates that he was not always thus. But since he is thus, he believes thathe has not yet been successfully outthussed by any body. 

He speaks of his early life in the citron groves of Syrsilla, and howquiet and reserved he had been, never daring to say "gosh" within a mileof the house; but finally how the Romans landed on his coast and killedoff his family. Then he desired to be a fighter. He had killed more lionsthan any other man in Italy. He kept a big crew of Romans busy, winter andsummer, catching fresh lions for him to stick. He had killed a largenumber of men also. At one matinee for ladies and children he had killed aprominent man from the north, and had done it so fluently that he wasencored three times. The stage manager then came forward and asked thatthe audience would please refrain from another encore as he had run out ofmen, but if the ladies and children would kindly attend on the followingSaturday he hoped to be prepared with a good programme. In fact, he hadjust heard from his agent who wrote him that they had purchased two biglions and also had a robust gladiator up a tree. He hoped that he couldget into town in a day or two with both attractions. 

Spartacus finally stood at the head of an army of 100, 000 men, allstarting out from the little band of 70 that cut loose from Capua withborrowed cleavers and axhandles. This war lasted but two years, duringwhich time Spartacus made Rome howl. Spartacus had too much sense toattack Rome. But at last his army was betrayed and disorganized. Withnothing but death or capture for him, he rode out between the twocontending armies, shot his war horse in order to save expenses, and onfoot rushed into the thickest of the fight. This was positively his lastappearance. He killed a large number of people, but at last he yielded tothe great pressure that was brought to bear upon him and died. 

Probably no man not actually engaged in the practice of medicine everkilled so many people as Spartacus. He did not kill them because hedisliked them personally, but because he thought it advisable to do so. Had he lived till the present time he would have done well as a lecturer. "Ten Years in the Arena, with Illustrations, " would draw first-rate atthis time among a certain class of people. The large number of peoplestill living in this country, who will lay aside their work and go twentymiles to attend a funeral, no matter whose funeral it is, would, no doubt, enjoy a bull fight or the cairn and refining joy that hovered over thearena. Those who have paid $175, 000 to see Colonel John L. Sullivandisfigure a friend, would, no doubt, have made it $350, 000 if the victimcould have been killed and dragged around over the ring by the leg. 

Two thousand years have not refined us so much that we need be puffed upwith false pride about it. 

Concerning Book Publishing. 

"Amateur" writes me that he is about to publish a book, and asks me if Iwill be kind enough to suggest some good, reliable publisher for him. 

This would suggest that "Amateur" wishes to confer his book on somedeserving publisher with a view to building him up and pouring a goldenstream of wealth into his coffers. "Amateur" already, in his mind's eye, sees the eager millions of readers knocking each other down and tramplingupon one another in the mad rush for his book. In my mind, I see his eye, lighted up with hope, and, though he lives in New Jersey, I fancy I canhear his quickened breath as his bosom heaves. 

[Illustration: WISHES TO CONFER HIS BOOK ON SOME DESERVING PUBLISHER. ]

Evidently he has never published a book. There is a good deal of fun aheadof him that he does not wot of. I used to think that when I got the lastpage of my book ready for press, the front yard would be full ofpublishers tramping down the velvet lawn and the meek-eyed pansies intheir crazy efforts to get hold of the manuscript, but when I had writtenthe last word of my first volume of soul-throb, and had opened thecasement to look out on the howling, hungry mob of publishers, withcheckbooks in one hand and a pillow-case full of scads in the other, I wasa little puzzled to notice the abrupt and pronounced manner in which theywere not there. 

All of us have to struggle before we can catch the eye of the speaker. Milton didn't get one-fiftieth as much for "Paradise Lost" as I got for myfirst book, and yet you will find people to-day who claim that if Miltonhad lived he could have knocked the socks off of me with one hand tiedbehind him. Recollect, however, that I am not here to open a discussion onthis matter. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion in relation toauthors. People cannot agree on the relative merits of literature. Now, for instance, last summer I met a man over in South Park, Col. , who couldrepeat page after page of Shakespeare, and yet, when I asked him if he wasfamiliar with the poems of the "Sweet Singer of Michigan, " he turned uponme a look of stolid vacancy, and admitted that he had never heard of herin his life. 

A Calm. 

The old Greeley Colony in Colorado, a genuine oasis in the desert, withits huge irrigating canals of mountain water running through the mightywheat fields, glistening each autumn at the base of the range, affords agood deal that is curious, not only to the mind of the gentleman from theStates, but even to the man who lives at Cheyenne, W. T. , only a few hours'journey to the north. 

You could hardly pick out two cities so near each other and yet so unlikeas Cheyenne and Greeley. The latter is quiet, and even accused of beingdull, and yet everybody is steadily getting rich. It is a town of readers, thinkers and mental independents. It is composed of the elements of NewEngland shrewdness and Western push, yet Greeley as compared with Cheyennewould be called a typical New England town in the midst of the active, fluctuating, booming West. 

Cheyenne is not so tame. With few natural advantages the reputation ofCheyenne is that, in commercial parlance, she is "A 1" for promptness inpaying her debts and absence of failures. There is more wealth there inproportion to the number of inhabitants than elsewhere in the civilizedworld, no doubt. The people take special pleasure in surprising Easternpeople who visit them by a reception very often that they will longremember for cordiality, hospitality, and even magnificence. 

Still I didn't start out to write up either Cheyenne or Greeley. Iintended to mention casually Dr. Law, of the latter place, who acted as myphysician for a few months and coaxed me back from the great hereafter. Ihad been under the hands of a physician just before, who was also coroner, and who, I found afterward, was trying to treat me professionally as longas the lamp held out to burn, intending afterward to sit upon meofficially. He had treated me professionally until he was about ready tosummon his favorite coroner's jury. Then I got irritated and left thecounty of his jurisdiction. 

Learning that Dr. Law was relying solely on the practice of medicine for alivelihood, I summoned him, and after explaining the great danger thatstood in the way of harmonizing the practice of medicine and the officialwork of the inquest business, I asked him if he had any businessconnection with any undertaking establishment or _hic jacet_ business, andlearning from him that he had none, I engaged him to solder up myvertebrae and reorganize my spinal duplex. 

Sometimes it isn't entirely the medicine you swallow that paralyzes painso much as it is the quiet magnetism of a good story and the snap of apleasant eye. I had one physician who tried to look joyous when he cameinto the room, but he generally asked me to run my tongue out till hecould see where it was tied on, then he would feel my pulse with his coldfinger and time it with a $6 watch, and after that he would write a newprescription for horse medicine and heave a sigh, look at me as he mightif it had been the last time he ever expected to see me on earth, and thenhe would sigh and go away. When he came back he generally looked shockedand grieved to find me alive. This was the _pro tem_ physician and_ex-officio_ coroner. I always felt as though I ought to apologize to himfor clinging to life so, when no doubt he had the jury in the hall waitingto "view" me. 

Dr. Law used to tell me of the early history of the Greeley Colony, andhow the original cranks of the community used to be in session most of thetime, and how they sometimes neglected to do their planting to dolegislating, and how they overdid the council work and neglected to "bug"their potatoes. I remember, also, of his description of how the crew, working on the original big irrigating canal, struck when it was abouthalf done, and swore that from the Poudre the ditch was going to run uphill, and would, therefore, be a failure. The engineer didn't know atfirst what was best to do with the belligerent laborers, but finally hetook the leader away from the rest of the crew and said, "Now, I tell youthis in confidence, because of course I know perfectly well that thestockholders may kick on it if they hear it, but I'm building the blamedthing as level as I can and putting one end of it in the Poudre and oneend in the Platte. Now, if I'm building it up hill the water'll run downfrom the Platte into the Poudre, and if not it'll run from the Poudre intothe Platte. Sabe?"

The ditch was built, and now a deep, still river runs from the Poudre tothe Platte, according to advertisement. 

Greeley is also noted for its watchmakers. I sent my watch to the firstone I heard of, and he said it needed cleaning. He cleaned it. I paid him$2 and took it home, when it ran two hours and then suspended. Then I tookit to another watchmaker who said that the first man had used machine oilon its works, and had heated the wheels so as to gum the oil on the cogs. He would have to eradicate the cooked oil from the watch, and it wouldcost me $3. I paid it, and joyfully took the watch home. The next day Ifound that it had gained time enough to pay for itself. By noon, it hadfatigued itself so that it was losing terribly, and by the day followinghad folded its still hands across its pale face in the sleep that knows nowaking. I took it to the third and last jeweler in the town. Everyone saidhe was a good workman, but a trifle slow. In the afternoon I went in tosee how he was getting along with it. He was sitting at his bench with adice cup in his eye, apparently looking into the digestive economy of thewatch. 

I looked at him some time, not wishing to disturb him and interfere withhis diagnosis. He did not move or say anything. Several people came in totrade and get the correct time, but he paid no attention to them. 

I got tired and changed from one foot to the other several times. Then Iasked him how he got along, or something of that kind, but he never openedhis head. He was the most preoccupied watch savant I ever saw. No outsideinfluence could break up his chain of thought when he got after a diseasedwatch. 

I finally got around on the outside of the shop and looked in the window, where I could get a good view of his face. 

He was asleep. 

The Story of a Struggler. 

My name is Kaulbach. William J. Kaulbach is my name, and I am spending thesummer in Canada. I may remain here during the winter, also. My parentsare very poor. They had never been wealthy, and at the time of my birththey were even less wealthy than they had been before. As soon as I wasborn the poverty of my parents attracted my attention. I decided at onceto relieve their distress. I intended to aid them from my own pocket, butfound upon examination that I had no funds in my pocket; also, no pocket;also, no place to put a pocket if I had brought one with me. So my parentscontinued to be poor, and to put by a little poverty for a rainy day. Iwas sole heir to the poverty they had acquired in all these years. 

Nature did not do much for me in the way of beauty, either. I was quiteplain when born and may still be identified by that peculiarity. Plainesswith me is not only a characteristic, but it is a passion. My whole beingis wrapped up in it. My hair is a sort of neutral brindle, such as growsupon the top of a retired hair trunk, and my freckles are olive green, fading into a delicate, crushed-bran color. They are very large, andactually pain me at times. 

My teacher tried to encourage me by telling me of other poor boys who hadgrown up to be president of the United States, and he tried to get me toconsent to having my name used as a candidate; but I refrained from doingso. I knew that, although I was deserving of the place, I could not endurethe bitterness of a campaign, and that the illustrated papers wouldenlarge upon my personal appearance and bring out my freckles till youcould hang your hat on them. 

So I grew up to be a stage robber. 

When I have my mask on my freckles do not show. I lectured on phrenologyat first to get means to prosecute my studies as a stage robber, and whenI had perfected myself as a burglar I went abroad to study the methods ofthe Italian banditti. I was two years under the teaching of the oldmasters, and acquired great fluency as a robber while there. I studiedfrom nature all the time, and some of my best work was taken from life. Ihad an opportunity to observe all the methods of the most celebratedgarroting maestro and stilletto virtuoso. He was an enthusiast andthoroughly devoted to his art. He had a large price on his head, also. Aside from that he went bareheaded winter and summer. 

[Illustration: MAKING HIS DEBUT. ]

Finally I returned to my own native land, poor, but fired with a mightyambition. I went west and proceeded at once to _debut_. I went west tohold up the country. I was very successful, indeed, and have had my handsin the pockets of our most eminent men. 

We were isolated from society a good deal, but we met the better class ofpeople now and then in the course of our business. I did not like so muchnight work, and sometimes we had to eat raw pork because we did not wishto build a fire that would attract mosquitoes and sheriffs. So we wereliable more or less to trichina and insomnia, but still we were free fromsewer gas and poll tax. We did not get our mail with much regularity, butwe got a lick at some mighty fine scenery. 

But all this is only incidental. What I desired to say was this: Fame anddistinction come high, and when we have them in our grasp at last we findthat they bring their resultant sorrows. I worked long and hard for fame, and sat up nights and rode through alkali dust for thousands of miles, that I might be known as the leading robber of the age in which I lived, only to find at last that my great fame was the source of my chiefannoyance. It made me so widely known that I felt, as Christine Nilssonsays, "as though I lived in a glass case. " Everyone wanted to see me. Everyone wanted my autograph. Everyone wanted my skeleton to hang up inthe library. 

I could have traveled with a show and drawn a large salary, but I hated towear a boiler iron overcoat all through the hot weather, after havinglived so wild and free. But all this attention worried me so that I couldnot sleep, and many a night I would arise from the lava bed on which I hadreclined, and putting on my dressing-gown and slippers, I would wanderabout under the stars and wish that I could be an unknown boy again in myfar away home. But I could not. I often wished that I could die a naturaldeath, but that was out of the question. 

Finally, it got so that I did not dare to take a chew of tobacco, unless Idid so under an assumed name. I hardly dared to let go of my six-shooterlong enough to wipe my nose, for fear that someone might get the drop onme. 

That is the reason why I came to Canada. Here among so many criminals, Ido not attract attention, but I use a _nom de plume_ all the time, evenhere, and all these hot nights, while others take off their clothing, Ilie and swelter in my heavy winter _nom de plume_. 

The Old Subscriber. 

At this season of the year, we are forcibly struck with the earnest andhonest effort that is being made by the publisher of the Americannewspaper. It is a healthy sign and a hopeful one for the future of ourcountry. It occurs to me that with the great advancement of the newspaper, and the family paper, and the magazine, we do not expect leaders andstatesmen to think for us so much as we did fifty years ago. We do notallow the newspaper to mold us so much as we did. We enjoy reading theopinion of a bright, brave, and cogent editor because we know that he sitswhere he can acquire his facts in a few hours from all quarters of theglobe, and speak truly to his great audience in relation to those facts, but we have ceased to allow even that man to think for us. 

What then is to be the final outcome of all this? Is it not that theaverage American is going to use, and is using, his thinker more than heever did before? Will not that thinker then, like the muscle of theblacksmith's arm, or the mule's hind foot, grow to a wondrous size as aresult? Most assuredly. 

The day certainly is not far distant, when the American can not onlyout-fight, out-row, out-bat, out-run, out-lie, and out-sail all othernationalities; but he will also be able to out-think them. We alreadypoint with pride to some of the wonderful thoughts that our leadingthinkists, with their thinkers, have thunk. There are native bornAmericans now living, who have thought of things that would make the headof the amateur thinker ache for a week. 

All this is largely due to the free use of the newspaper as a homeeducator. The newspaper is growing more and more ubiquitous, if I may beallowed the expression. Many poor people, who, a few years ago, could notafford the newspaper, now have it scolloped and put it on their pantryshelves every year. 

But I did not start out to enlarge upon the newspaper. I would like to saya word or two more, however, on that general subject. Very often we hearsome wise man with the responsibility of the universe on his shoulders, theman who thinks he is the censor of the human race now, and that he will beforeman of the grand jury on the Judgment Day--we hear this kind of mansay every little while:

"We've got too many papers. We are loaded down with reading matter. Can'tread all my paper every day. Lots of days I throw my paper aside before Iget it all read through, and never have a chance to finish it. All that isdead loss. "

It is, of course, a dead loss to that kind of a man. He is the kind of manthat expects his family to begin at one side of the cellar and eat rightstraight across, it--cabbages, potatoes, turnips, pickles, apples, pumpkins, etc. , etc. , --without stopping to discriminate. There are nonetoo many papers, so far as the subscriber is concerned. Looking at it fromthe publisher's standpoint sometimes, there are too many. 

To the man who has inherited too large, wide, sinewy hands, and a brainthat under the microscope looks like a hepatized lung, it seems some daysas though the field had been over-crowded when he entered it. To the youngman who was designed to maul rails or sock the fence-post into the bosomof the earth, and who has evaded that sphere of action and disregarded themandate to maul rails, or to take a coal-pick and toy with the bowels ofthe earth, hoping to win an easier livelihood by feeding sour paste tovillage cockroaches, and still poorer pabulum to his subscribers, thenewspaper field seems to be indeed jam full. 

But not so the man who is tall enough to see into the future about ninefeet. He still remembers that he must live in the hearts of hissubscribers, and he makes their wants his own. He is not to proud tolisten to suggestions from the man who works. He recognizes that it is notthe man with the diamond-mounted stomach who has contributed most to hissuccess, but the man who never dips into society much with the exceptionof his family, perhaps, and that ought to be good society. A man ought notto feel too good to associate with his wife and children. Generally mysympathies are with his wife and children, if they have to associate withhim very much. 

But if I could ever get down to it, I would like to say a word on behalfof the old subscriber. Being an old subscriber myself, I feel an interestin his cause; and as he rarely rushes into print except to ask why thepolice contrive to keep aloof from anything that might look like a fight, or to inquire why the fire department will continue year after year to runthrough the streets killing little children who never injured thedepartment in any way, just so that they will be in time to chop a hole inthe roof of a house that is not on fire, and pour some water down into thelibrary, then whoop through an old tin dipper a few times and go away--asthe old subscriber does not generally say much in print except on theabove subjects, I make bold to say on his behalf that as a rule, he is nottreated half as well as the prodigal son, who has been spending hissubstance on a rival paper, or stealing his news outright from the oldsubscriber. 

Why should we pat the new subscriber on the back, and give him a new albumthat will fall to pieces whenever you laugh in the same room? Why shouldyou forget the old love for the new? Do we not often impose on the oldsubscriber by giving up the space he has paid for to flamingadvertisements to catch the coy and skittish gudgeon who still lurksoutside the fold? Do we not ofttimes offer a family Bible for a newsubscriber when an old subscriber may be in a lost and undone state?

Do we not again and again offer to the wife of our new subscriber abeautiful, plain gold ring, or a lace pin for a year's subscription and$1, while the wife of our old subscriber is just in the shank of a long, hard, cold winter, without a ring or a pin to her back?

We ought to remember that the old subscriber came to us with his moneywhen we most needed it. He bore with us when we were new in the business, and used such provincialisms as "We have saw" and "If we had knew. " Hebore with us when the new column rules were so sharp that they chawed thepaper all up, and the office was so cold, waiting for wood to come in onsubscription, that the "color" was greasy and reluctant. He took our paperand paid for it, while the new subscriber was in the penitentiary for allwe know. He made a mild kick sometimes when he "didn't git his paperreggler;" but he paid on the first day of January every year in advance, out of an old calfskin wallet that opened out like a concertina, and had astrap that went around it four times, and looked as shiny, and sweaty, andgood-natured as the razor-strop that might have been used by Noah. 

The old subscriber never asked any rebate, or requested a prize volume ofpoetry with a red cover, because he had paid for another year; but hesimply warmed his numb fingers, so that he could loosen his overalls andlower one side enough to let his hand into the pocket of his bestpantaloons underneath, and there he always found the smooth wallet, andinside of it there was always a $2 bill, that had been put there to payfor the paper. Then the old subscriber would warm his hands some more, ask"How's tricks?" but never begin to run down the paper, and then he wouldgo away to work for another year. 

[Illustration: THE RIGHT SORT OF SUBSCRIBER. ]

I want to say that this country rests upon a great, solid foundation ofold, paid-up subscribers. They are the invisible, rock-ribbedresting-place for the dazzling superstructure and the slim and peakedspire. Whether we procure a new press or a new dress, a new contributor ora new printers' towel, we must bank on the old subscriber; for the new oneis fickle, and when some other paper gives him a larger or a reddercovered book, he may desert our standard. He yearns for the flesh-pots andthe new scroll saws of other papers. He soon wearies of a uniformly goodpaper, with no chance to draw a town lot or a tin mine--in Montana. 

Let us, therefore, brethren of the press, cling to the old subscriber ashe has clung to us. Let us say to him, on this approaching Christmas Eve, "Son, thou art always with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meetthat we should make merry, that this, thy brother, who had been asubscriber for our vile contemporary many years, but is alive again, andduring a lucid interval has subscribed for our paper; but, after all, wewould not go to him if we wanted to borrow a dollar. Remember that youstill have our confidence, and when we want a good man to indorse our noteat the bank, you will find that your name in our memory is ever fresh andgreen. "

Looking this over, I am struck with the amount of stuff I havesuccessfully said, and yet there is a paucity of ideas. Some writers wouldnot use the word paucity in this place without first knowing the meaningof it, but I am not that way. There are thousands of words that I now usefreely, but could not if I postponed it until I could learn their meaning. Timidity keeps many of our authors back, I think. Many are more timidabout using big words than they are about using other people's ideas. 

A friend of mine wanted to write a book, but hadn't the time to do it. Sohe asked me if I wouldn't do it for him. He was very literary, he said, but his business took up all his time, so I asked him what kind of a bookhe wanted. He said he wanted a funny book, with pictures in it and a bluecover. I saw at once that he had fine literary taste and delicatediscrimination, but probably did not have time to give it full swing. Iasked him what he thought it would be worth to write such a book. "Well, "he said, he had always supposed that I enjoyed it myself, but if I thoughtI ought to have pay besides, he would be willing to pay the same as he didfor his other writing--ten cents a folio. 

He is worth $50, 000, because he has documentary evidence to show that aman who made that amount out of deceased hogs, had the misfortune to behis father and then die. 

It was a great triumph to be born under such circumstances, and yet theyoung man lacks the mental stamina necessary to know how to successfullyeat common mush and milk in such a low key that will not alarm the police. 

I use this incident more as an illustration than anything else. Itillustrates how anything may be successfully introduced into an article ofthis kind without having any bearing whatever upon it. 

I like to close a serious essay, or treatise, with some humorous incident, like the clown in the circus out West last summer, who joked along throughthe performance all the afternoon till two or three children went intoconvulsions, and hypochondria seemed to reign rampant through the tent. All at once a bright idea struck him. He climbed up on the flying trapeze, fell off, and broke his neck. He was determined to make that audiencelaugh, and he did it at last. Every one felt repaid for the trouble ofgoing to the circus. 

My Dog. 

I have owned quite a number of dogs in my life, but they are all dead now. Last evening I visited my dog cemetery--just between the gloaming and theshank of the evening. On the biscuit-box cover that stands at the head ofa little mound fringed with golden rod and pickle bottles, the idler maystill read these lines, etched in red chalk by a trembling hand:

LITTLE KOSCIUSKO, --NOT DEAD, --BUT JERKED HENCEBy Request. S. Y. L. (See you Later. )

I do not know why he was called Kosciusko. I do not care. I only know thathis little grave stands out there while the gloaming gloams and thesoughing winds are soughing. 

Do you ask why I am alone here and dogless in this weary world?

I will tell you, anyhow. It will not take long, and it may do me good:

Kosciusko came to me one night in winter, with no baggage andunidentified. When I opened the door he came in as though he had leftsomething in there by mistake and had returned for it. 

He stayed with us two years as a watch-dog. In a desultory way, he was agood watch-dog. If he had watched other people with the same unrelentingscrutiny with which he watched me, I might have felt his death more keenlythan I do now. 

The second year that little Kosciusko was with us, I shaved off a fullbeard one day while down town, put on a clean collar and otherwisedisguised myself, intending to surprise my wife. 

Kosciusko sat on the front porch when I returned. He looked at me as thecashier of a bank does when a newspaper man goes in to get a suspiciouslylarge check cashed. He did not know me. I said, "Kosciusko, have youforgotten your master's voice?"

He smiled sarcastically, showing his glorious wealth of mouth, but stillsat there as though he had stuck his tail into the door-steps and couldn'tget it out. 

So I waived the formality of going in at the front door, and went aroundto the portcullis, on the off side of the house, but Kosciusko was therewhen I arrived. The cook, seeing a stranger lurking around the manorhouse, encouraged Kosciusko to come and gorge himself with a part of myleg, which he did. Acting on this hint I went to the barn. I do not knowwhy I went to the barn, but somehow there was nothing in the house that Iwanted. When a man wants to be by himself, there is no place like a good, quiet barn for thought. So I went into the barn, about three feet prior toKosciusko. 

[Illustration: THE COMBAT. ]

Noticing the stairway, I ascended it in an aimless kind of way, about foursteps at a time. What happened when we got into the haymow I do not nowrecall, only that Kosciusko and I frolicked around there in the hay forsome time. Occasionally I would be on top, and then he would have all thedelegates, until finally I got hold of a pitchfork, and freedom shriekedwhen Kosciusko fell. I wrapped myself up in an old horse-net and went intothe house. Some of my clothes were afterward found in the hay, and thedoctor pried a part of my person out of Kosciusko's jaws, but not enoughto do me any good. 

I have owned, in all, eleven dogs, and they all died violent deaths, andwent out of the world totally unprepared to die. 

A Picturesque Picnic. 

Railroads have made the Rocky Mountain country familiar and contiguous, Imay say, to the whole world; but the somber canon, the bald and blackenedcliff, the velvety park and the snowy, silent peak that forever restsagainst the soft, blue sky, are ever new. The foamy green of the torrenthas whirled past the giant walls of nature's mighty fortress myriads ofyears, perhaps, and the stars have looked down into the great heart ofearth for centuries, where the silver thread of streams, thousands of feetbelow, has been patiently carving out the dark canon where the eagle andthe solemn echo have their home. 

I said this to a gentleman from Leadville a short time ago as we toiled upKenoska Hill, between Platte canon and the South Park, on the South Parkand Pacific Railway. He said that might be true in some cases and evenmore so, perhaps, depending entirely on whether it would or not. 

I do not believe at this moment that he thoroughly understood me. He wasonly a millionaire and his soul, very likely, had never throbbed andthrilled with the mysterious music nature yields to her poet child. 

He could talk on and on of porphyry walls and contact veins, gray copperand ruby silver, and sulphurets and pyrites of iron, but when my eyekindled with the majestic beauty of these eternal battlements and my voicetrembled a little with awe and wonder; while my heart throbbed andthrilled in the midst of nature's eloquent, golden silence, this man satthere like an Etruscan ham and refused to throb or thrill. He was about asunsatisfactory a throbber and thriller as I have met for years. 

At an elevation of over 10, 000 feet above high water mark, Fahrenheit, theSouth Park, a hundred miles long, surrounded by precipitous mountains orgreen and sloping foot-hills, burst upon us, In the clear, still air, ahundred miles away, at Pueblo, I could hear a promissory note andcut-throat mortgage drawing three per cent a month. So calm and unruffledwas the rarified air that I fancied I could hear the thirteenth assessmenton a share of stock at Leadville toiling away at the bottom of a twohundred and fifty foot shaft. 

Colorado air is so pure that men in New York have, in several instances, heard the dull rumble of an assessment working as far away as the San Juancountry. 

At Como, in the park, I met Col. Wellington Wade, the Duke of DirtyWoman's Ranch, and barber extraordinary to old Stand-up-and-Yowl, chief ofthe Piebiters. 

Colonel Wade is a reformed temperance lecturer. I went to his shop to getshaved, but he was absent. I could smell hair oil through the keyhole, butthe Colonel was not in his slab-inlaid emporium. He had been preparinganother lecture on temperance, and was at that moment studying the habitsof his adversary at a neighboring gin palace. I sat down on the steps anddevoured the beautiful landscape till he came. Then I sat down in thechair, and he hovered over me while he talked about an essay he hadwritten on the flowing bowl. His arguments were not so strong as hisbreath seemed to be. I asked him if he wouldn't breathe the other wayawhile and let me sober up. I learned afterward that although his nose wasred, his essay was not. 

He would shave me for a few moments, and then he would hone the razor onhis breath and begin over again. I think he must have been pickling hislungs in alcohol. I never met a more pronounced gin cocktail symphony andbologna sausage study in my life. 

I think Sir Walter Scott must have referred to Colonel Wade when he said, "Breathes there a man with soul so dead?" Colonel Wade's soul might nothave been dead, but it certainly did not enjoy perfect health. 

I went over the mountains to Breckenridge the next day, climbed two milesperpendicularly into the sky, rode on a special train one day, a push carthe next and a narrow-gauge engine the next. Saw all the beauty of thecountry, in charge of Superintendent Smith, went over to Buena Vista andhad a congestion of the spine and a good time generally. You can leaveDenver on a morning train and see enough wild, grand, picturesqueloveliness before supper, to store away in your heart and hang upon thewalls of memory, to last all through your busy, humdrum life, and it is agood investment, too. 

Taxidermy. 

This name is from two Greek words which signify "arrangement" and "skin, "so that the ancient Greeks, no doubt, regarded taxidermy as the originalskin-game of that period. Taxidermy did not flourish in America prior tothe year 1828. At that time an Englishman named Scudder established amuseum and general repository for upholstered beasts. 

Since then the art has advanced quite rapidly. To properly taxiderm, requires a fine taste and a close study of the subject itself in life, akin to the requirements necessary in order to succeed as a sculptor. Ihave seen taxidermed animals that would not fool anybody. I recall, atthis time especially, a mountain lion, stuffed after death by a party whohad not made this matter a subject of close study. The lion wasrepresented in a crouching attitude, with open jaws and red gums. As timepassed on and year succeeded year, this lion continued to crouch. His tailbecame less rampant and drooped like a hired man on a hot day. His gumsbecame less fiery red and his reddish skin hung over his bones in a looseand distraught manner, like an old buffalo robe thrown over the knees of avinegary old maid. Spiders spun their webs across his dull, white fangs. Mice made their nests in his abdominal cavity. His glass eye becamehopelessly strabismussed, and the moths left him bald-headed on thestomach. He was a sad commentary on the extremely transitory nature of allthings terrestrial and the hollowness of the stuffed beast. 

I had a stuffed bird for a long time, which showed the cunning of thestuffer to a great degree. It afforded me a great deal of unalloyedpleasure, because I liked to get old hunters to look at it and tell mewhat kind of a bird it was. They did not generally agree. A bitter andacrimonious fight grew out of a discussion in relation to this bird. A manfrom Vinegar Hill named Lyons and a party called Soiled Murphy (sincedeceased), were in my office one morning--Mr. Lyons as a witness, and Mr. Murphy in his great specialty as a drunk and disorderly. We had justdisposed of the case, and had just stepped down from the bench, intendingto take off the judicial ermine and put some more coal in the stove, whenthe attention of Soiled Murphy was attracted to the bird. He allowed thatit was a common "hell-diver with an abnormal head, " while Lyons claimedthat it was a kingfisher. 

The bird had a duck's body, the head of a common eagle and the feet of asage hen. These parts had been adjusted with great care and the tailloaded with lead somehow, so that the powerful head would not tip the birdup behind. With this _rara avis_, to use a foreign term, I loved to amuseand instruct old hunters, who had been hunting all their lives for a freedrink, and hear them tell how they had killed hundred of these birds overon the Poudre in an early day, or over near Elk Mountain when the countrywas new. 

So Lyons claimed that he had killed millions of these fowls, and SoiledMurphy, who was known as the tomato can and beer-remnant savant of thatcountry, said that before the Union Pacific Railroad got into thatsection, these birds swarmed around Hutton's lakes and lived on hornedtoads. 

The feeling got more and more partisan till Mr. Lyons made a pass atSoiled Murphy with a large red cuspidor that had been presented to me byValentine Baker, a dealer in abandoned furniture and mines. Mr. Murphythen welted Lyons over the head with the judicial scales. He then adroitlycaught a lump of bituminous coal with his countenance and fell to thefloor with a low cry of pain. 

I called in an outside party as a witness, and in the afternoon both menwere convicted of assault and battery. Soiled Murphy asked for a change ofvenue on the ground that I was prejudiced. I told him that I did not allowanything whatever to prejudice me, and went on with the case. 

This great taxidermic masterpiece led to other assaults afterward, all ofwhich proved remunerative in a small way. My successor claimed that thebird was a part of the perquisites of the office, and so I had to turn itover with the docket. 

I also had a stuffed weasel from Cummins City that attracted a great dealof attention, both in this country and in Europe. It looked some like aweasel and some like an equestrian sausage with hair on it. 

The Ways of Doctors. 

"There's a big difference in doctors, I tell you, " said an old-timer to methe other day. "You think you know something about 'em, but you are stillin the fluff and bloom, and kindergarten of life, Wait till you've beenthrough what I have. "

"Where, for instance?" I asked him. 

"Well, say nothing about anything else, just look at the doctors we had inthe war. We had a doctor in our regiment that looked as if he knew so muchthat it made him unhappy. I found out afterward that he ran a kind of cowfoundling asylum, in Utah before the war, and when he had to prescribe fora human being, it seemed to kind of rattle him. 

"I fell off'n my horse early in the campaign and broke my leg, Irickolect, and he sot the bone. He thought that a bone should be sotsimilar to a hen. He made what he called a good splice, but the break wasabove the knee, and he got the cow idea into his head in a way that setthe knee behind. That was bad. 

[Illustration: HE GAVE ME A CIGAR. ]

"I told him one day that he was a blamed fool. He gave me a cigar and toldme I must be a mind reader. 

"For several weeks our colonel couldn't eat anything, and seemed to feelkind of billious. He didn't know what the trouble was till he went to thedoctor. He looked at the colonel a few moments, examined his tongue, andtold him right off that he had lost his cud. 

"He bragged a good deal on his diagnosis. He said he'd like to see thedisease he couldn't diagnose with one hand tied behind him. 

"He was always telling me how he had resuscitated a man they hung over atT---- City in the early day. He was hung by mistake, it seemed. It was adark night and the Vigilance committee was in something of a hurry, havinganother party to hang over at Dirty Woman's ranch that night, and so theyerroneously hung a quiet young feller from Illinois, who had been sentwest to cure a case of bronchitis. He was right in the middle of anexplanation when the head vigilanter kicked the board from under him andbroke his neck. 

[Illustration: BURIED WITH MILITARY HONORS. ]

"All at once, some one said: 'My God, we have made a ridiculous blunder. Boys, we can't be too careful about hanging total strangers. A few moresuch breaks as these, and people from the States will hesitate aboutcoming here to make their homes. We have always claimed that this was agood country for bronchitis, but if we write to Illinois and tell thisyoung feller's parents the facts, we needn't look for a very large hegirafrom Illinois next season. Doc. , can't you do anything for the young man?'

"Then this young physician stepped forward, he says, and put his knee onthe back of the boy's neck, give it a little push, at the same time pulledthe head back with a snap that straightened the neck, and the youngfeller, who was in the middle of a large word, something like 'contumely, 'when the barrel tipped over, finished out the word and went right on withthe explanation. The doctor said he lived a good many years, and was lovedand esteemed by all who knew him. 

"The doctor was always telling of his triumphs in surgery. He did save agood many lives, too, toward the close of the war. He did it in an oddway, too. 

"He had about one year more to serve, and, with his doctoring on one sideand the hostility of the enemy on the other, our regiment was wore down toabout five hundred men. Everybody said we couldn't stand it more thananother year. One day, however, the doctor had just measured a man for aporus plaster, and had laid the stub of his cigar carefully down on thetop of a red powder-keg, when there was a slight atmospheric disturbance, the smell of burnt clothes, and our regiment had to apply for a newsurgeon. 

"The wife of our late surgeon wrote to have her husband's remainsforwarded to her, but I told her that it would be very difficult to do so, owing to the nature of the accident. I said, however, that we had found anupper set of store teeth imbedded in a palmetto tree near by, and hadburied them with military honors, erecting over the grave a large board, on which was inscribed the name and age of the deceased and thisinscription:

"_Not dead, but spontaneously distributed. Gone to meet his glorifiedthrong of patients. Ta, ta, vain world_. "

Absent Minded. 

I remember an attorney, who practiced law out West years ago, who used tofill his pipe with brass paper fasteners, and try to light it with aruling pen about twice a day. That was his usual average. 

He would talk in unknown tongues, and was considered a thorough andrevised encyclopedia on everything from the tariff on a meerschaum pipe tothe latitude of Crazy Woman's Fork west of Greenwich, and yet if he wentto the postoffice he would probably mail his pocketbook and carefullybring his letter back to the office. 

One day he got to thinking about the Monroe doctrine, or the sudden andhorrible death of Judas Iscariot, and actually lost his office. He walkedup and down for an hour, scouring the town for the evanescent office thathad escaped his notice while he was sorrowing over the shocking death ofJudas, or Noah's struggles against malaria and a damp, late spring. 

Martin Luther Brandt was the name of this eccentric jurist. He got up inthe night once, and dressed himself, and taking a night train in thatdreamy way of his, rode on to Denver, took the Rio Grande train in themorning and drifted away into old Mexico somewhere. He must have been inthat same old half comatose state when he went away, for he made a mostludicrous error in getting his wife in the train. When he arrived in oldMexico he found that he had brought another man's wife, and by somestrange oversight had left his own at home with five children. It hardlyseems possible that a man could be so completely enveloped in a brownstudy that he would err in the matter of a wife and five children, butsuch was the case with Martin Luther. Martin Luther couldn't tell you hisown name if you asked him suddenly, so as to give him a nervous shock. 

This dreamy, absent-minded, wool-gathering disease is sometimescontagious. Pretty soon after Martin Luther struck Mexico the malignantform of brown study broke out among the greasers, and an alarming maniaon the somnambulistic order seemed to follow it. A party of Mexicansomnambuloes one night got together, and while the disease was at itsheight tied Martin Luther to the gable of a 'dobe hen palace. His soulis probably at this moment floundering around through space, trying tofind the evergreen shore. 

An old hunter, who was a friend of mine, had this odd way of walkingaimlessly around with his thoughts in some other world. 

I used to tell him that some day he would regret it, but he only laughedand continued to do the same fool thing. 

Last fall he saw a grizzly go into a cave in the upper waters of thePlatte, and strolled in there to kill her. As he has not returned up tothis moment, I am sure he has erroneously allowed himself to get mixed upas to the points of the compass, and has fallen a victim to this fatalbrown study. Some think that the brown study had hair on it. 

Woman's Wonderful Influence. 

"Woman wields a wonderful influence over man's destinies, " said WoodtickWilliam, the other day, as he breathed gently on a chunk of blossom rockand then wiped it carefully with the tail of his coat. 

"Woman in most cases is gentle and long suffering, but if you observeclose for several consecutive weeks you will notice that she generallygets there with both feet. 

"I've been quite a student of the female mind myself. I have, therefore, had a good deal of opportunity to compare the everedge man with theeveredge woman as regards ketchin' on in our great general farewelljourney to the tomb. 

[Illustration: "YOU GO ON WITH YOUR PETITION. "]

"Woman has figgered a good deal in my own destinies. My first wife was alarge, powerful woman, who married me before I hardly knew it. She marriedme down near Provost, in an early day. Her name was Lorena. The namedidn't seem to suit her complexion and phizzeek as a general thing. It waslike calling the fat woman in the museum Lily. Lorena was a woman of greatstrength of purpose. She was also strong in the wrists. Lorena was offoreign extraction, with far-away eyes and large, earnest red hands. Youought to have saw her preserve order during the hour for morning prayers. I had a hired man there in Utah, in them days, who was inclined to be ascoffer at our plain home-made style of religion. So I told Lorena that Iwas a little afraid that Orlando Whoopenkaugh would rise up suddenly whileI was at prayer and spatter my thinker all over the cook stove, or createsome other ruction that would cast a gloom over our devotions. 

"Lorena said: 'Never mind, William. You are more successful in prayer, while I am more successful in disturbances. You go on with your petition, and I will preserve order. "

"Lorena saved my life once in a singular manner. Being a large, powerfulwoman, of course she no doubt preserved me from harm a great many times;but on this occasion it was a clear case. 

"I was then sinking on the Coopon claim, and had got the prospect shaftdown a couple of hundred foot and was drifting for the side wall withindifferent success. We was working a day shift of six men, blasting, hysting and a little timbering. I was in charge of the crew and easterncapital was furnishing the ready John Davis, if you will allow me that lowterm. 

[Illustration: LORENA JUMPING NINE FEET HIGH. ]

"Lorena and me had been a little edgeways for several days, owing to alittle sassy remark made by her and a retort on my part in which Ithoughtlessly alluded to her brother, who was at that time serving out alittle term for life down at Canyon City, and who, if his life is spared, is at it yet. If I wanted to make Lorena jump nine feet high and holler, all I had to do was just to allude in a jeering way to her family record, so she got madder and madder, till at last it ripened into open hostility, and about noon on the 13th day of September Lorena attacked me with alarge butcher knife and drove me into the adjoining county. She told me, also, that if I ever returned to Provost she would cut me in two rightbetween the pancreas and the watch pocket and feed me to the hens. 

"I thought if she felt that way about it I would not return. I felt sohurt and so grieved about it that I never stopped till I got to Omaha. Then I heard how Lorena, as a means in the hands of Providence, had savedmy unprofitable life. 

"When she got back to the house and had put away her butcher knife, a mancame rushing in to tell her that the boys had struck a big pay streak ofwater, and that the whole crew in the Coopon was drowned, her husbandamong the rest. 

"Then it dawned on Lorena how she had saved me, and for the first time inher life she burst into tears. People who saw her said her grief wasterrible. Tears are sad enough when shed by a man, but when we see astrong woman bowed in grief, we shudder. 

"No one who has never deserted his wife at her urgent request can fullyrealize the pain and anguish it costs. I have been married many timessince, but the sensation is just the same to-day as it was the first timeI ever deserted my wife. 

"As I said, though, a woman has a wonderful influence over a man's wholelife. If I had a chance to change the great social fabric any, though, Ishould ask woman to be more thoughtful of her husband, and, if possible, less severe. I would say to woman, be a man. Rise above these petty littletyrannical ways. Instead of asking your husband what he does with everycent you give him, learn to trust him. Teach him that you have confidencein him. Make him think you have anyway, whether you have or not. Do notseek to get a whiff of his breath every ten minutes to see whether he hasbeen drinking or not. If you keep doing that you will sock him into adrunkard's grave, sure pop. He will at first lie about it, then he willuse disinfectants for the breath, and then he will stay away till he getsover it. The timid young man says, 'Pass the cloves, please. I've got toget ready to go home pretty soon. ' The man whose wife really has fun withhim says, 'Well, boys, good-night. I'm sorry for you. ' Then he goes home. 

"Very few men have had the opportunities for observation in a matrimonialway that I have, William. You see, one man judges all the wives inChristendom by his'n. Another does ditto, and so it goes. But I have madematrimony a study. It has been a life-work for me. Others have simplydabbled into it. I have studied all its phases and I am an expert. So Isay to you that woman, in one way or another, either by strategy andwinnin' ways or by main strength and awkwardness, is absolutely sure towield an all-fired influence over poor, weak man, and while grass growsand water runs, pardner, you will always find her presiding over man'sdestinies and his ducats. "

Causes for Thanksgiving. 

We are now rapidly approaching the date of our great nationalthanksgiving. Another year has almost passed by on the wings of tirelesstime. 

Since last we gathered about the festive board and spattered the trueinwardness of the family gobbler over the table cloth, remorseless time, who knows not the weight of weariness, has sought out the good, the trueand the beautiful, as well as the old, the sinful and the tough, and haslaid his heavy hand upon them. We have no more fitting illustration of thegreat truth that death prefers the young and tender than the deceasedturkey upon which we are soon to operate. How still he lies, mowed down inlife's young morn to make a yankee holiday. 

How changed he seems! Once so gay and festive, now so still, so strangelyquiet and reserved. How calmly he lies, with his bare limbs buried in thelurid atmosphere like those of a hippytehop artist on the west side. 

Soon the amateur carver will plunge the shining blade into the unresistingbird, and the air will be filled with stuffing and half smotheredprofanity. The Thanksgiving turkey is a grim humorist, and nothing pleaseshim so well as to hide his joint in a new place and then flip over andsmile when the student misses it and buries the knife in the bosom of apersonal friend. Few men can retain their _sang froid_ before company whenthey have to get a step ladder and take down the second joint and themerry thought from the chandelier while people are looking at them. 

And what has the past year brought us? Speaking from a Republicanstandpoint, it has brought us a large wad of dark blue gloom. Speakingfrom a Democratic standpoint, it has been very prolific of fourth-classpostoffices worth from $200 down to $1. 35 per annum. Politically, the pastyear has been one of wonderful changes. Many have, during the year justpast, held office for the first time. Many, also, have gone out into thecold world since last Thanksgiving and seriously considered the greatproblem of how to invest a small amount of actual perspiration in plaingroceries. 

Many who considered the life of a politician to be one of high priced foodand inglorious ease, have found, now that they have the fruit, that it isashes on their lips. 

Our foreign relations have been mutually pleasant, and those who dwellacross the raging main, far removed from the refining influences of ourprohibitory laws, have still made many grand strides toward theamelioration of our lost and undone race. Many foreigners who have neverexperienced the pleasure of drinking mysterious beverages from gasfixtures and burial caskets in Maine, or from a blind pig in Iowa, or aBabcock fire extinguisher in Kansas, still enjoy life by bombarding theCzar as he goes out after a scuttle of coal at night, or by putting asurprise package of dynamite on the throne of a tottering dynasty, wheresaid tottering dynasty will have to sit down upon it and then pass rapidlyto another sphere of existence. 

Many startling changes have taken place since last November. The politicalfabric in our own land has assumed a different hue, and men who a year agowere unnoticed and unknown are even more so now. This is indeed a healthysign. No matter what party or faction may be responsible for this, I sayin a wholly non-partisan spirit, that I am glad of it. 

I am glad to notice that, owing to the active enforcement of the Edmundsbill in Utah, polygamy has been made odorous. The day is not far distantwhen Utah will be admitted as a State and her motto will be "one country, one flag, and one wife at a time. " Then will peace and prosperity unite tomake the modern Zion the habitation of men. The old style of hand-madevalley tan will give place to a less harmful beverage, and we will welcomethe new sister in the great family circle of States, not clothed in thedisagreeable endowment robe, but dressed up in the Mother Hubbard wrapper, with a surcingle around it, such as the goddess of liberty wears when shehas her picture taken. 

Crops throughout the northwest have been fairly good, though the gainyield has been less in quantity and inferior in quality to that of lastyear. A Democratic administration has certainly frowned upon theprofessional, partisan office seekers, but it has been unable to stay theonward march of the chintz bug or to produce a perceptible falling off inpip among the yellow-limbed fowls. While Jeffersonian purity and economyhave seemed to rage with great virulence at Washington, in the northwestheaves and botts among horses and common, old-fashioned hollow horn amongcattle have been the prevailing complaints. 

And yet there is much for which we should be thankful. Many broad-browedmen who knew how a good paper ought to be conducted, but who had no othervisible means of support, have passed on to another field of labor, leaving the work almost solely in the hands of the vast army of noviceswho at the present are at the head of journalism throughout the country, and who sadly miss those timely words of caution that were wont to fallfrom the lips of those men whose spirits are floating through space, finding fault with the arrangement of the solar system. 

The fool-killer, in the meantime, has not been idle. With his old, rusty, unloaded musket, he has gathered in enough to make his old heart swellwith pride, and to this number he has added many by using "rough on rats, "a preparation that never killed anything except those that wereunfortunate enough to belong to the human family. 

Still the fool-killer has missed a good many on account of the great rushof business in his line, and I presume that no one has a greater reason tobe thankful for this oversight than I have. 

Farming in Maine. 

The State of Maine is a good place in which to experiment withprohibition, but it is not a good place to farm it in very largely. 

In the first place, the season is generally a little reluctant. When I wasup near Moosehead Lake, a short time ago, people were driving across thatbody of water on the ice with perfect impunity. That is one thing thatinterferes with the farming business in Maine. If a young man issleigh-riding every night till midnight, he don't feel like hoeing cornthe following day. Any man who has ever had his feet frost-bitten whilebugging potatoes, will agree with me that it takes away the charm ofpastoral pursuits. It is this desire to amalgamate dog days and SantaClaus, that has injured Maine as an agricultural hot-bed. 

[Illustration: A DAY-DREAM. ]

Another reason that might be assigned for refraining from agriculturalpursuits in Maine, is that the agitator of the soil finds when it is toolate that soil itself, which is essential to the successful propagation ofcrops, has not been in use in Maine for years. While all over the Statethere is a magnificent stone foundation on which a farm might safely rest, the superstructure, or farm proper, has not been secured. 

If I had known when I passed through Minnesota and Illinois what a soilfamine there was in Maine, I would have brought some with me. The stonecrop this year in Maine will be very great. If they do not crack openduring the dry weather, there will be a great many. The stone bruise isalso looking unusually well for this season of the year, and chilblainswere in full bloom when I was there. 

In the neighborhood of Pittsfield, the country seems to run largely tocold water and chattel mortgages. Some think that rum has always keptMaine back, but I claim that it has been wet feet. In another article Irefer to the matter of rum in Maine more fully. 

The agricultural resources of Pittsfield and vicinity are not great, theprincipal exports being spruce gum and Christmas trees. Here also thehuckleberry hath her home. But the country seems to run largely toChristmas trees. They were not yet in bloom when I visited the State, soit was too early to gather popcorn balls and Christmas presents. 

Here, near Pittsfield, is the birthplace of the only original wormlessdried apple pie, with which we generally insult our gastric economy whenwe lunch along the railroad. These pies, when properly kiln-dried andrivetted, with German silver monogram on top, if fitted out with Yale timelock, make the best fire and burglar-proof wormless pies of commerce. Theytake the place of civil war, and as a promoter of intestine strife theyhave no equal. 

The farms in Maine are fenced in with stone walls. I do not know way thisis done, for I did not see anything on these farms that anyone wouldnaturally yearn to carry away with him. 

I saw some sheep in one of these enclosures. Their steel-pointed billswere lying on the wall near them, and they were resting their jaws in thecrisp, frosty morning air. In another enclosure a farmer was plantingclover seed with a hypodermic syringe, and covering it with a mustardplaster. He said that last year his clover was a complete failure becausehis mustard plasters were no good. He had tried to save money by usingsecond-hand mustard plasters, and of course the clover seed, missing thewarm stimulus, neglected to rally, and the crop was a failure. 

Here may be noticed the canvas-back moose and a strong antipathy to goodrum. I do not wonder that the people of Maine are hostile to rum--if theyjudge all rum by Maine rum. The moose is one of the most gamey of thefinny tribe. He is caught in the fall of the year with a double-barrelshotgun and a pair of snow-shoes. He does not bite unless irritated, butlittle boys should not go near the female moose while she is on her nest. The masculine moose wears a harelip, and a hat rack on his head to whichis attached a placard on which is printed:

PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS. 

This shows that the moose is a humorist. 

Doosedly Dilatory. 

Since the investigation of Washington pension attorneys, it is a littleremarkable how scarce in the newspapers is the appearance ofadvertisements like this. 

Pensions! Thousands of soldiers of the late war are still entitled topensions with the large accumulations since the injury was received. Weprocure pensions, back pay, allowances. Appear in the courts fornonresident clients in United States land cases, etc. Address Skinnem &Co. , Washington, D. C. 

I didn't participate in the late war, but I have had some experience inputting a few friends and neighbors on the track of a pension. Those whohave tried it will remember some of the details. It always seemed to me alittle more difficult somehow for a man who had lost both legs atAntietam, than for the man who got his nose pulled off at an electionthree years after the war closed. It, of course, depended a good deal onthe extemporaneous affidavit qualifications of the applicant. About fiveyears ago an acquaintance came to me and said he wanted to get a pensionfrom the government, and that he hadn't the first idea about the details. He didn't know whether he should apply to the President or to theSecretary of State. Would I "kind of put him onto the racket. " I asked himwhat he wanted a pension for, and he said his injury didn't show much, butit prevented his pursuit of kopecks and happiness. He had nine children byhis first wife, and if he could get a pension he desired to marry again. 

As to the nature of his injuries, he said that at the battle of Fair Oakshe supported his command by secreting himself behind a rail fence andharassing the enemy from time to time, by a system of coldness and neglecton his part. While thus employed in breaking the back of the Confederacy, a solid shot struck a crooked rail on which he was sitting, in such a wayas to jar his spinal column. From this concussion he had never fullyrecovered. He didn't notice it any more while sitting down and quiet, butthe moment he began to do manual labor or to stand on his feet too long, unless he had a bar or something to lean up against, he felt the coldchill run up his back and life was no object. 

I told him that I was too busy to attend to it, and asked him why hedidn't put his case in the hands of some Washington attorney, who could beon the ground and attend to it. He decided that he would, so he wrote toone of these philanthropists whom we will call Fitznoodle. I give him the_nom de plume_ of Fitznoodle to nip a $20, 000 libel suit in the bud. Well, Fitznoodle sent back some blanks for the claimant to sign, by which hebound himself, his heirs, executors, representatives and assigns, firmlyby these presents to pay to said Fitznoodle, the necessary fees forpostage, stationery, car fare, concert tickets, and office rent, whilesaid claim was in the hands of the pension department. He said in a letterthat he would have to ask for $2, please, to pay for postage. He incloseda circular in which he begged to refer the claimant to a reformed memberof the bar of the District of Columbia, a backslidden foreign minister andthree prominent men who had been dead eleven years by the watch. In apostscript he again alluded to the $2 in a casual way, waved the Americanflag two times, and begged leave to subscribe himself once more. "YoursFraternally and professionally, Good Samaritan Fitznoodle, Attorney atLaw, Solicitor in Chancery, and Promotor of Even-handed Justice in and forthe District of Columbia. " The claimant sent his $2, not necessarily forpublication, but as a guaranty of good faith. 

Later on Mr. Fitznoodle said that the first step would be to file adeclaration enclosing $5 and the names of two witnesses who were presentwhen the claimant was born, and could identify him as the same man whoenlisted from Emporia in the Thirteenth Kansas Nighthawks. Five dollarsmust be enclosed to defray the expenses of a trip to the office of thecommissioner of pensions, which trip would naturally take in elevensaloons and ten cents in car fare. "P. S. --Attach to the declaration thesignature and seal of a notary public of pure character, $5, thecertificate of the clerk of a court of record as to the genuineness ofthe signature of the notary public, his term of appointment and $5. "These documents were sent, after which there was a lull of about threemonths. Then the swelling in Mr. Fitznoodle's head had gone down alittle, but there was still a seal brown taste in his mouth. So he wrotethe claimant that it would be necessary to jog the memory of thedepartment about $3 dollars worth; and to file collateral testimonysetting forth that claimant was a native born American or that he haddeclared his intention to become a citizen of the United States, that hehad not formed nor expressed an opinion for or against the accused, whichthe testimony would not eradicate, that he would enclose $3, and that hehad never before applied for a pension. After awhile a circular from thepension end of the department was received, stating that the claimant'sapplication had been received, filed and docketed No. 188, 935, 062-1/2, onpage 9, 847 of book G, on the thumb-hand side as you come in on the NewYork train. On the strength of this document the claimant went to thegrocery and bought an ecru-colored ham, a sack of corn meal and a poundof tobacco. In June Mr. Fitznoodle sent a blank to be filled out by theclaimant, stating whether he had or had not been baptized prior to hisenlistment; and, if so, to what extent, and how he liked it so far as hehad gone. This was to be sworn to before two witnesses, who were to bemale, if possible, and if not, the department would insist on their beingfemale. These witnesses must swear that they had no interest in the saidclaim, or anything else. On receipt of this, together with $5 inpostoffice money order or New York draft, the document would be filedand, no doubt, acted upon at once. In July, a note came from the attorneysaying that he regretted to write that the pension department was now250, 000 claims behind, and if business was taken up in its regular order, the claim under discussion might not be reached for between nine and tenyears. However, it would be possible to "expedite" the claim, if $25could be remitted for the purpose of buying a spike-tail coat and plughat, in which to appear before the commissioner of pensions and mash himflat on the shape of the attorney. As the claimant didn't know much ofthe practical working of the machinery of government, he swallowed thispill and remitted the $25. Here followed a good deal of red tape andinternational monkeying during which the claimant was alternately takingan oath to support the constitution of the United States, and promisingto support the constitution and by-laws of Mr. Fitznoodle. The claimantwas constantly assured that his claim was a good one and on theseautograph letters written with a type-writer, the war-born veteran with aconcussed vertebra bought groceries and secured the funds to pay hisassessments. 

For a number of years I heard nothing of the claim, but a few months ago, when Mr. Fitznoodle was arrested and jerked into the presence of the grandjury, a Washington friend wrote me that the officers found in his table aletter addressed to the man who was jarred in the rear of the Union army, and in which (the letter, I mean), he alluded to the long and pleasantcorrespondence which had sprung up between them as lawyer and client, andregretting that, as the claim would soon be allowed, their friendlyrelations would no doubt cease, would he please forward $13 to pay freighton the pension money, and also a lock of his hair that Mr. Fitznoodlecould weave into a watchchain and wear always. As the claimant does notneed the papers, he probably thinks by this time that Mr. Good SamaritanFitznoodle has been kidnapped and thrown into the moaning, hungry sea. 

Every Man His Own Paper-Hanger. 

It would please me very much, at no distant day, to issue a small bookfilled with choice recipes and directions for making home happy. I haveaccumulated an immense assortment of these things, all of general use andall excellent in their way, because they have been printed in papers allover the country--papers that would not be wrong. Some of these recipes Ihave tried. 

I have tried the recipe for paste and directions for applying wall paper, as published recently in an agricultural paper to which I had become verymuch attached. 

This recipe had all the characteristics of an ingenuous and honestdocument. I cut it out of the paper and filed it away where I came verynear not finding it again. But I was unfortunate enough to find it after along search. 

The scheme was to prepare a flour paste that would hold forever, and atthe same time make the paper look smooth and neat to the casual observer. It consisted of so many parts flour, so many parts hot water and so manyparts common glue. First, the walls were to be sized, however. I took acommon tape measure and sized the walls. 

Then I put a dishpan on the cook stove, poured in the flour, boiling waterand glue. This rapidly produced a dark brown mess of dough, to which I wasobliged to add more hot water. It looked extremely repulsive to me, but itlooked a good deal better than it smelled. 

I did not have much faith in it, but I thought I would try it. I put someof it on a long strip of wall paper and got up on a chair to apply it. Inthe excitement of trying to stick it on the wall as nearly perpendicularas possible, I lost my balance while still holding the paper and fell insuch a manner as to wrap four yards of bronze paper and common flour pastearound my wife's head, with the exception of about four feet of the paperwhich I applied to an oil painting of a Gordon Setter in a gilt frame. 

I decline to detail the dialogue which then took place between my wife andmyself. Whatever claim the public may have on me, it has no right todemand this. It will continue to remain sacred. That is, not so verysacred of course, if I remember my exact language at the time, butsacredly secret from the prying eyes of the public. 

It is singular, but it is none the less the never dying truth, that theonly time that paste ever stuck anything at all, was when I applied it tomy wife and that picture. After that it did everything but adhere. Itgourmed and it gummed everything, but that was all. 

The man who wrote the recipe may have been stuck on it, but nothing elseever was. 

[Illustration: I LOST MY BALANCE. ]

Finally a friend came along who helped me pick the paper off the dog andsoothe my wife. He said that what this paste needed was more glue and aquart of molasses. I added these ingredients, and constructed a quart ofchemical molasses which looked like crude ginger bread in a molten state. 

Then, with the aid of my friend, I proceeded to paper the room. The paperwould seem to adhere at times, and then it would refrain from adhering. This was annoying, but we succeeded in applying the paper to the walls ina way that showed we were perfectly sincere about it. We didn't seek tomislead anybody or cover up anything. Any one could see where each roll ofpaper tried to be amicable with its neighbor--also where we had tried thelaying on of hands in applying the paper. 

We got all the paper on in good shape--also the bronze. But they were indifferent places. The paper was on the walls, but the bronze was mostly onour clothes and on our hands. I was very tired when I got through, and Iwent to bed early, hoping to get much needed rest. In the morning, when Ifelt fresh and rested, I thought that the paper would look better to me. 

There is where I fooled myself. It did not look better to me. It lookedworse. 

All night long I could occasionally hear something crack like a Fourth ofJuly. I did not know at the time what it was, but in the morning Idiscovered. 

It seems that, during the night, that paper had wrinkled itself up likethe skin on the neck of a pioneer hen after death. It had pulled itselftogether with so much zeal that the room was six inches smaller each wayand the carpet didn't fit. 

There is only one way to insure success in the publication of recipes. They must be tried by the editor himself before they are printed. If youhave a good recipe for paste, you must try it before you print it. If youhave a good remedy for botts, you must get a botty horse somewhere and trythe remedy before you submit it. If you think of publishing the antidotefor a certain poison, you should poison some one and try the antidote onhim, in order to test it, before you bamboozle the readers of your paper. 

This, of course, will add a good deal of extra work for the editor, buteditors need more work. All they do now is to have fun with each other, draw their princely salaries, and speak sarcastically of the young poetwho sings, "You have came far o'er the sea, And I've went away from thee. "

Sixty Minutes in America. 

The following selections are from the advance sheets of a forthcoming workwith the above title, to be published by M. Foll de Roll. It is possiblethat other excerpts will be made from the book, in case the presentharmonious state of affairs between France and America is not destroyed bymy style of translation. 

In the preface M. Foll de Roll says: "France has long required a book ofprinted writings about that large, wide land of whom we listen to so muchand yet so little _sabe_, as the piquant Californian shall say. America isconsiderable. America I shall call vast. She care nothing how high freedomshall come, she must secure him. She exclaims to all people: 'You likefreedom pretty well, but you know nothing of it. We throw away every daymore freedom than you shall see all your life. Come to this place when youshall run out of freedom. We make it. Do not ask us for money, but if youwant personal liberty, please look over our vast stock before youelsewhere go. '

"So everybody goes to America, where he shall be free to pay cash for whatthe American has for sale. 

"In this book will be found everything that the French people want to knowof that singular land, for did I not cross it from New Jersey City, thetown where all the New York people have to go to get upon the cars, through to the town of San Francisco?

"For years the writer of this book has had it in his mind to go acrossAmerica, and then tell the people of France, in a small volume costing onefranc, all about the grotesque land of the freedom bird. "

In the opening chapter he alludes to New York casually, and apologizes fortaking up so much space. 

"When you shall land in New York, you shall feel a strange sensation. Thestomach is not so what we should call 'Rise up William Riley, ' to use anAmericanism which will not bear translation. I ride along the Rue deTwenty-three, and want to eat everything my eyes shall fall upon. 

"I stay at New York all night, and eat one large supper at 6 o'clock, andagain at 9. At 12 I awake and eat the inside of my hektograph, and thenlie down once more to sleep. The hektograph will be henceforth, as theAmerican shall say, no good, but what is that when a man is starving in aforeign land?

"I leave New York in the morning on the Ferry de Pavonia, a steamer thatgoes to New Jersey City. Many people go to New York to buy food andclothes. Then you shall see them return to the woods, where they live therest of the time. Some of the females are quite _petite_ and, as theAmericans have it, 'scrumptious. ' One stout girl at New Jersey City, I wastold, was 'all wool and a yard wide. '

"The relations between New York and New Jersey City are quite amicable, and the inhabitants seem to spend much of their time riding to and fro onthe Ferry de Pavonia and other steamers. When I talked to them in theirown language they would laugh with great glee, and say they could notparley voo Norwegian very good. 

"The Americans are very fond of witnessing what may be called the_tournament de slug_. In this, two men wearing upholstered mittens shakehands, and then one strikes at the other with his right hand, so as tomislead him, and, while he is taking care of that, the first man hits himwith his left and knocks out some of his teeth. Then the other man spitsout his loose teeth and hits his antagonist on the nose, or feeds him withthe thumb of his upholstered mitten for some time. Half the gate moneygoes to the hospital where these men are in the habit of being repaired. 

"One of these men, who is now the champion scrapper, as one Americanauthor has it, was once a poor boy, but he was proud and ambitious. So hepracticed on his wife evenings, after she had washed the dishes, until hefound that he could 'knock her out, ' as the American has it. Then he triedit on other relatives, and step by step advanced till he could make almostany man in America cough up pieces of this upholstered mitten which hewears in public. 

"In closing this chapter on New York, I may say that I have not said somuch of the city itself as I would like, but enough so that he who readswith care may feel somewhat familiar with it. New York is situated on theeast side of America, near New Jersey City. The climate is cool and frostya part of the year, but warm and temperate in the summer months. Thesurface is generally level, but some of the houses are quite tall. 

"I would not advise Frenchmen to go to New York now, but rather to waituntil the pedestal of M. Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty has been paid for. Many foreigners have already been earnestly permitted to help pay for thispedestal. "

Rev. Mr. Hallelujah's Hoss. 

There are a good many difficult things to ride, I find, beside the bicycleand the bucking Mexican plug. Those who have tried to mount andsuccessfully ride a wheelbarrow in the darkness of the stilly night willagree with me. 

You come on a wheelbarrow suddenly when it is in a brown study, and youundertake to straddle it, so to speak, and all at once you find thewheelbarrow on top. I may say, I think, safely, that the wheelbarrow is, as a rule, phlegmatic and cool; but when a total stranger startles it, itspreads desolation and destruction on every hand. 

This is also true of the perambulator, or baby-carriage. I undertook toevade a child's phaeton, three years ago last spring, as it stood in theentrance to a hall in Main street. The child was not injured, because itwas not in the carriage at the time; but I was not so fortunate. I pulledpieces of perambulator out of myself for two weeks with the hand that wasnot disabled. 

How a sedentary man could fall through a child's carriage in such a manneras to stab himself with the awning and knock every spoke out of threewheels, is still a mystery to me, but I did it. I can show you thedoctor's bill now. 

The other day, however, I discovered a new style of riding animal. TheRev. Mr. Hallelujah was at the depot when I arrived, and was evidentlywaiting for the same Chicago train that I was in search of. Rev. Mr. Hallelujah had put his valise down near an ordinary baggage-truck whichleaned up against the wall of the station building. 

He strolled along the platform a few moments, communing with himself andagitating his mind over the subject of Divine Retribution, and then hewent up and leaned against the truck. Finally, he somehow got his armsunder the handles of the truck as it stood up between his back and thewall. He still continued to think of the plan of Divine Retribution, andyou could have seen his lips move if you had been there. 

Pretty soon some young ladies came along, rosy in winter air, beautifulbeyond compare, frosty crystals in their hair; smiled they on the preacherthere. 

He returned the smile and bowed low. As he did so, as near as I can figureit out, he stepped back on the iron edge of the truck that the baggagemangenerally jabs under the rim of an iron-bound sample-trunk when he goes toload it. Anyhow, Mr. Hallelujah's feet flew toward next spring. The truckstarted across the platform with him and spilled him over the edge on thetrack ten feet below. So rapid was the movement that the eye withdifficulty followed his evolutions. His valise was carried onward by thesame wild avalanche, and "busted" open before it struck the track below. 

I was surprised to see some of the articles that shot forth into the broadlight of day. Among the rest there was a bran fired new set of ready-madeteeth, to be used in case of accident. Up to that moment I didn't knowthat Mr. Hallelujah used the common tooth of commerce. These teeth slippedout of the valise with a Sabbath smile and vulcanized rubber gums. 

[Illustration: A RAPID MOVEMENT. ]

In striking the iron track below, the every-day set which the Rev. Mr. Hallelujah had in use became loosened, and smiled across the road-bed andright of way at the bran fired new array of incisors, cuspids, bi-cuspidsand molars that flew out of the valise. Mr. Hallelujah got up and tried tolook merry, but he could not smile without his teeth. The back seams ofhis Newmarket coat were more successful, however. 

Mr. Hallelujah's wardrobe and a small boy were the only objects that daredto smile. 

Somnambulism and Crime. 

A recent article in the London _Post_ on the subject of somnambulism, calls to my mind several little incidents with somnambulistic tendenciesin my own experience. 

This subject has, indeed, attracted my attention for some years, and ithas afforded me great pleasure to investigate it carefully. 

Regarding the causes of dreams and somnambulism, there are many theories, all of which are more or less untenable. My own idea, given, of course, ina plain, crude way, is that thoughts originate on the inside of the brainand then go at once to the surface, where they have their photographstaken, with the understanding that the negatives are to be preserved. Inthis way the thought may afterward be duplicated back to the thinker inthe form of a dream, and, if the impulse be strong enough, muscular actionand somnambulism may result. 

On the banks of Bitter Creek, some years ago, lived an open-mouthed man, who had risen from affluence by his unaided effort until he was entirelyfree from any incumbrance in the way of property. His mind dwelt on thismatter a great deal during the day. Thoughts of manual labor flittedthrough his mind, but were cast aside as impracticable. Then other meansof acquiring property suggested themselves. These thoughts werephotographed on the delicate negative of the brain, where it is a rule topreserve all negatives. At night these thoughts were reversed within thethink resort, if I may be allowed that term, and muscular action resulted. Yielding at last to the great desire for possessions and property thesomnambulist groped his way to the corral of a total stranger, andselecting a choice mule with great dewy eyes and real camel's hair tail, he fled. On and on he pressed, toward the dark, uncertain west, till atlast rosy morn clomb the low, outlying hills and gilded the gray outlinesof the sage-brush. The coyote slunk back to his home, but the somnambulistdid not. 

He awoke as day dawned, and, when he found himself astride the mule ofanother, a slight shudder passed the entire length of his frame. He thenfully realized that he had made his debut as a somnambulist. He seemed tothink that he who starts out to be a somnambulist should never turn back. So he pressed on, while the red sun stepped out into the awful quiet ofthe dusty waste and gradually moved up into the sky, and slowly addedanother day to those already filed away in the dark maw of ages. 

Night came again at last, and with it other somnambulists similar to thefirst, only that they were riding on their own beasts. Some somnambulistsride their own animals, while others are content to bestride the steeds ofstrangers. 

The man on the anonymous mule halted at last at the mouth of a deep canon. He did so at the request of other somnambulists. Mechanically he got downfrom the back of the mule and stood under a stunted mountain pine. 

After awhile he began to ascend the tree by means of his neck. When he hadreached the lower branch of the tree he made a few gestures with his feetby a lateral movement of the legs. He made several ineffectual efforts tokick some pieces out of the horizon, and then, after he had gentlyoscilliated a few times, he assumed a pendent and perpendicular positionat right angles with the limb of the tree. 

The other somnambulists then took the mule safely back to his corral, andthe tragedy of a night was over. 

The London _Post_ very truly says that where somnambulism can be proved itis a good defense in a criminal action. It was so held in this case. 

Various methods are suggested for rousing the somnambulist, such astickling the feet, for instance; but in all my own experience, I neverknew of a more radical or permanent cure than the one so imperfectly givenabove. It might do in some cases to tickle the feet of a somnambulistdiscovered in the act of riding away on an anonymous mule, but how couldyou successfully tickle the soles of his feet while he is standing onthem? In such cases, the only true way would be to suspend thesomnambulist in such a way as to give free access to the feet from below, and, at the same time, give him a good, wide horizon to kick at. 

Modern Architecture. 

It may be premature, perhaps, but I desire to suggest to anyone who may becontemplating the erection of a summer residence for me, as a slighttestimonial of his high regard for my sterling worth and symmetricalescutcheon--a testimonial more suggestive of earnest admiration and warmpersonal friendship than of great intrinsic value, etc. , etc. , etc. , thatI hope he will not construct it on the modern plan of mental hallucinationand morbid delirium tremens peculiar to recent architecture. 

Of course, a man ought not to look a gift house in the gable end, but ifmy friends don't know me any better than to build me a summer cottage andthrow in odd windows that nobody else wanted, and then daub it up withcolors they have bought at auction and applied to the house after darkwith a shotgun, I think it is time that we had a better understanding. 

[Illustration: THE ARCHITECT. ]

Such a structure does not come within either of the three classes ofrenaissance. It is neither Florentine, Roman, or Venetian. Any man canoriginate such a style if he will only drink the right kind of whiskeylong enough and then describe the feelings to an amanuensis. 

Imagine the sensation that one of these modern, sawed-off cottages wouldcreate a hundred years from now, if it should survive! But that isimpossible. The only cheering feature of the whole matter is that thesecreatures of a disordered imagination must soon pass away, and the brightsunlight of hard horse sense shine in through the shattered dormers andgables and gnawed-off architecture of the average summer resort. 

A friend of mine a few days ago showed me his new house with much pride. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him I liked it first-rate. Then Iwent home and wept all night. It was my first falsehood. 

The house, taken as a whole, looked to me like a skating rink that hadstarted out to make money, and then suddenly changed its mind and resolvedto become a tannery. Then ten feet higher it lost all self-respect andblossomed into a full-blown drunk and disorderly, surrounded by thesmokestack of a foundry and the bright future of thirty days ahead withthe chain gang. That's the way it looked to me. 

The roofs were made of little odds and ends of misfit rafters anddistorted shingles that somebody had purchased at a sheriff's sale, andthe rooms and stairs were giddy in the extreme. 

I went in and rambled around among the cross-eyed staircases and othernight-mares till reason tottered on her throne. Then I came out and stoodon the architectural wart, called the side porch, to get fresh air. Thisporch was painted a dull red, and it had wooden rosettes at the cornersthat looked like a new carbuncle on the nose of a social wreck. 

Farther up on the demoralized lumber pile I saw, now and then, placeswhere the workman's mind had wandered and he had nailed on his clapboardswrong side up, and then painted them with Paris green that he had intendedto use on something else. 

It was an odd looking structure, indeed. If my friend got all the materialfor nothing from people who had fragments of paint and lumber left overafter they failed, and then if the workmen constructed it of night formental relaxation and intellectual repose, without charge, of course thescheme was a financial success, but architecturally the house is a grossviolation of the statutes in such cases made and provided, and against thepeace and dignity of the State. 

There is a look of extreme poverty about the structure which a man mightstruggle for years to acquire and then fail. No one could look upon itwithout a feeling of heartache for the man who built that house, andprobably struggled on year after year, building a little at a time as hecould steal the lumber, getting a new workman each year, building a knobhere and a protuberance there, putting in a three-cornered window at onepoint and a yellow tile or a wad of broken glass and other debris atanother, patiently filling in around the ranch with any old rubbish thatother people had got through with, painting it as he went along, takingwhat was left in the bottom of the pots after his neighbors had paintedtheir bob-sleds or their tree boxes--little favors thankfullyreceived--and then surmounting the whole pile with a potpourri of roof, and grand farewell incubus of humps and hollows for the rain to wanderthrough and seek out the different cells where the lunatics live whoinhabit it. 

I did tell my friend one thing that I thought would improve the looks ofhis house. He asked me eagerly what it could be. I said it would take aman of great courage to do it for him. He said he didn't care for that. Hewould do it himself. If it only needed one thing he would never rest tillhe had it, whatever that might be. 

Then I told him that if he had a friend--one he could trust--who wouldsteal in there some night while the family were away, and scratch a matchon the leg of his breeches, or on the breeches of any other gentleman whohappened to be present, and hold it where it would ignite the allegedhouse, and then remain near there to see that the fire department did notmeddle with it, he would confer a great favor on one who would cheerfullyretaliate in kind on call. 

Letter to a Communist. 

Dear Sir. --Your courteous letter of the 1st instant, in which youcordially consent to share my wealth and dwell together with me infraternal sunshine, is duly received. While I dislike to appear cold anddistant to one who seems so yearnful and so clinging, and while I do notwish to be regarded as purse-proud or arrogant, I must decline your kindoffer to whack up. You had not heard, very likely, that I am not now aCommunist. I used to be, I admit, and the society no doubt neglected tostrike my name off the roll of active members. For a number of years I wasquite active as a Communist. I would have been more active, but I hadconscientious scruples against being active in anything then. 

While you may be perfectly sincere in your belief that the greatcapitalists like Mr. Gould and Mr. Vanderbilt should divide with you, youwill have great difficulty in making it perfectly clear to them. They willprobably demur and delay, and hem and haw, and procrastinate, till finallythey will get out of it in some way. Still, I do not wish to throw coldwater on your enterprise. If the other capitalists look favorably on theplan, I will cheerfully co-operate with them. You go and see what you cando with Mr. Vanderbilt, and then come to me. 

You go on at some length to tell me how the most of the wealth is in thehands of a few men, and then you attack those men and refer to them in away that makes my blood run cold. You tell the millionaires of America tobeware, for the hot breath of a bloody-handed Nemesis is already in theair. 

[Illustration: PRACTICAL COMMUNISM. ]

You may say to Nemesis, if you please, that I have a double-barreledshotgun standing at the head of my bed every night, and that I am in theNemesis business. You also refer to the fact that the sleuth-hounds ofeternal justice are camped on the trail of the pampered millionaire, andyou ask us to avaunt. If you see the other sleuth-hounds of your societywithin a week or two, I wish you would say to them that at a regularmeeting of the millionaires of this country, after the minutes of theprevious meeting had been read and approved, we voted almost unanimouslyto discourage any sleuth-hound that we found camped on our trail after teno'clock, P. M. Sleuth-hounds who want to ramble over our trails duringoffice hours may do so with the utmost impunity, but after ten o'clock wewant to use our trails for other purposes. No man wants to go to the greatexpense of maintaining a trail winter and summer, and then leave it outnights for other people to use and return it when they get ready. 

I do not censure you, however. If you could convince every one of theutility of Communism, it would certainly be a great boon--to you. To thosewho are now engaged in feeding themselves with flat beer out of a tomatocan, such a change as you suggest would fall like a ray of sunshine in arat-hole, but alas! it may never be. I tried it awhile, but my effortswere futile. The effect of my great struggle seemed to be that men'shearts grew more and more stony, and my pantaloons got thinner and thinneron the seat, 'till it seemed to me that the world never was so cold. ThenI made some experiments in manual labor. As I began to work harder and sitdown less, I found that the world was not so cold. It was only when I satdown a long time that I felt how cold and rough the world really was. 

Perhaps it is so with you. Sedentary habits and stale beer are apt to makeus morbid. Sitting on the stone door sills of hallways and publicbuildings during cold weather is apt to give you an erroneous impressionof life. 

Of course I am willing to put my money into a common fund if I can beconvinced that it is best. I was an inside passenger on a Leadville coachsome years ago, when a few of your friends suggested that we all put ourmoney into a common fund, and I was almost the first one to see that theywere right. They went away into the mountains to apportion the money theygot from our party, but I never got any dividend. Probably they lost mypost-office address. 

The Warrior's Oration. 

Warriors! We are met here to-day to celebrate the white man's Fourth ofJuly. I do not know what the Fourth of July has done for us that we shouldremember his birthday, but it matters not. Another summer is on the wane, and so are we. We are the walleyed waners from Wanetown. We havemonopolized the wane business of the whole world. 

Autumn is almost here, and we have not yet gone upon the war path. Thepale face came among us with the corn planter and the Desert Land Act, andwe bow before him. 

What does the Fourth of July signify to us? It is a hollow mockery! Wherethe flag of the white man now waves in the breeze, a few years ago thescalp of our foe was hanging in the air. Now my people are seldom. Someare dead and others drunk. 

Once we chased the deer and the buffalo across the plains, and lived high. Now we eat the condemned corned beef of the oppressor, and weep over thegraves of our fallen braves. A few more moons and I, too, shall cross overto the Happy Reservation. 

Once I could whoop a couple of times and fill the gulch with warlikeathletes. Now I may whoop till the cows come home and only my sickly howlcomes back to me from the hillsides. I am as lonely as the greenbackparty. I haven't warriors enough to carry one precinct. 

Where are the proud chieftains of my tribe? Where are Old Weasel Asleepand Orlando the Hie Jacet Promoter? Where are Prickly Ash Berry and TheAvenging Wart? Where are The Roman-nosed Pelican and Goggle-eyed Aleck, The-man-who-rides-the-blizzard-bareback?

They are extremely gone. They are extensively whence. Ole Blackhawk, inwhose veins flows the blood of many chiefs, is sawing wood for the Belleof the West deadfall for the whiskey. He once rode the war pony into thefray and buried his tomahawk in the phrenology of his foe. Now hestraddles the saw-buck and yanks the woodsaw athwart the bosom of thebasswood chunk. 

My people once owned this broad land; but the Pilgrim Fathers (where arethey?) came and planted the baked bean and the dried apple, and my tribevamoosed. Once we were a nation. Now we are the tin can tied to theAmerican eagle. 

Warriors! This should be a day of jubilee, but how can the man rejoice whohas a boil on his nose? How can the chief of a once proud people shootfirecrackers and dance over the graves of his race? How can I be hilariouswith the victor, on whose hands are the blood of my children?

If we had known more of the white man, we would have made it red hot forhim four hundred years ago when he came to our coast. We fed him andclothed him as a white-skinned curiosity then, but we didn't know therewere so many of him. All he wanted then was a little smoking tobacco andlove. Now he feeds us on antique pork, and borrows our annuities to builda Queen Anne wigwam with a furnace in the bottom and a piano in the top. 

Warriors! My words are few. Tears are idle and unavailing. If I hadscalding tears enough for a mill site, I would not shed a blamed one. Thewarrior suffers, but he never squeals. He accepts the position and saysnothing. He wraps his royal horse blanket around his Gothic bones and issilent. 

But the pale face cannot tickle us with a barley straw on the Fourth ofJuly and make us laugh. You can kill the red man, but you cannot make himhilarious over his own funeral. These are the words of truth, and mywarriors will do well to paste them in their plug hats for futurereference. 

The Holy Terror. 

While in New England trying in my poor, weak way to represent the "rowdywest, " I met a sad young man who asked me if I lived in Chi-eene. I toldhim that if he referred to Cheyenne, I had been there off and on a gooddeal. 

He said he was there not long ago, but did not remain. He bought someclothes in Chicago, so that he could appear in Chi-eene as a "holy terror"when he landed there, and thus in a whole town of "holy terrors" he wouldnot attract attention. 

I am not, said he, by birth or instinct, a holy terror, but I thought Iwould like to try it a little while, anyhow. I got one of those Chicagosombreros with a gilt fried cake twisted around it for a band. Then I gota yellow silk handkerchief on the ten cent counter to tie around my neck. Then I got a suit of smoke-tanned buckskin clothes and a pair ofmoccasins. I had never seen a bad, bad man from Chi-eene, but I had seenpictures of them and they all wore moccasins. The money that I had left Iput into a large revolver and a butcher knife with a red Morocco sheath toit. The revolver was too heavy for me to hold in one hand and shoot, butby resting it on a fence I could kill a cow easy enough if she wasn't tooblamed restless. 

I went out to the stock yards in Chicago one afternoon and practiced withmy revolver. One of my thumbs is out there at the stock yards now. 

At Omaha I put on my new suit and sent my human clothes home to my father. He told me when I came away that when I got out to Wyoming, probably Iwouldn't want to attract attention by wearing clothes, and so I could sendmy clothes back to him and he would be glad to have them. 

At Sidney I put on my revolver and went into the eating house to get mydinner. A tall man met me at the door and threw me about forty feet in anoblique manner. I asked him if he meant anything personal by that and hesaid not at all, not at all. I then asked him if he would not allow me toeat my dinner and he said that depended on what I wanted for my dinner. IfI would lay down my arms and come back to the reservation and remainneutral to the Government and eat cooked food, it would be all right, butif I insisted on eating raw dining-room girls and scalloped young ladies, he would bar me out. 

We landed at Chi-eene in the evening. They had hacks and 'busses andcarriages till you couldn't rest, all standing there at the depot, and alarge colored man in a loud tone of voice remarked: "INTEROCEANHO-TEL!!!!"

[Illustration: A REAL COWBOY. ]

I went there myself. It had doors and windows to it, and carpets and gas. The young man who showed me to my room was very polite to me. He seemed towant to get acquainted. He said:

"You are from New Hampshire, are you not?"

I told him not to give it away, but I was from New Hampshire. Then I askedhim how he knew. 

He said that several New Hampshire people had been out there that summer, and they had worn the same style of revolver and generally had one thumbdone up in a rag. Then he said that if I came from New Hampshire he wouldshow me how to turn off the gas. 

He also took my revolver down to the office with him and put it in thesafe, because he said someone might get into my room in the night and killme with it if he left it here. He was a perfect gentleman. 

They have a big opera house there in Chi-eene, and while I was there theyhad the Eyetalian opera singers, Patty and Nevady there. The streets werelit up with electricity, and people seemed to kind of politely look downon me, I thought. Still, they acted as if they tried not to notice myclothes and dime museum hat. 

They seemed to look at me as if I wasn't to blame for it, and as if theyfelt sorry for me. If I'd had my United States clothes with me, I couldhave had a good deal of fun in Chi-eene, going to the opera and thelectures, and concerts, et cetera. But finally I decided to return, so Iwrote to my parents how I had been knocked down and garroted, and left fordead with one thumb shot off, and they gladly sent the money to payfuneral expenses. 

With this I got a cut-rate ticket home and surprised and horrified myparents by dropping in on them one morning just after prayers. I tried toget there prior to prayers, but was side-tracked by my father's newanti-tramp bull dog. 

Boston Common and Environs. 

Strolling through the Public Garden and the famous Boston Common, theuntutored savage from the raw and unpolished West is awed and his wildspirit tamed by the magnificent harmony of nature and art. Everywhere theeye rests upon all that is beautiful in nature, while art has heightenedthe pleasing effect without having introduced the artistic jim-jams of alost and undone world. 

It is a delightful place through which to stroll in the gray morning whilethe early worm is getting his just desserts. There, in the midst of agreat city, with the hum of industry and the low rumble of the throbbingBoston brain dimly heard in the distance, nature asserts herself, and theweary, sad-eyed stranger may ramble for hours and keep off the grass tohis heart's content. 

Nearly every foot of Boston Common is hallowed by some historicalincident. It is filled with reminiscences of a time when liberty was notoverdone in this new world, and the tyrant's heel was resting calmly onthe neck of our forefathers. 

In the winter of 1775-6, over 110 years ago, as the ready mathematicianwill perceive, 1, 700 redcoats swarmed over Boston Common. Later on thelocal antipathy to these tourists became so great that they went away. They are still fled. A few of their descendants were there when I visitedthe Common, but they seemed amicable and did not wear red coats. Theircoats this season are made of a large check, with sleeves in it. Theirwardrobe generally stands a larger check than their bank account. 

The fountains in the Common and the Public Garden attract the eye of thestranger, some of them being very beautiful. The Brewer fountain onFlagstaff hill, presented to the city by the late Gardner Brewer, is veryhandsome. It was cast in Paris, and is a bronze copy of a fountaindesigned by Lienard of that city. At the base there are figuresrepresenting Neptune with his fabled pickerel stabber, life size; alsoAmphitrite, Acis and Galatea. Surviving relatives of these parties maywell feel pleased and gratified over the life-like expression which, thesculptor has so faithfully reproduced. 

But the Coggswell fountain is probably the most eccentric squirt, and onewhich at once rivets the eye of the beholder. I do not know who designedit, but am told that it was modeled by a young man who attended thecodfish autopsy at the market daytimes and gave his nights to art. 

The fountain proper consists of two metallic bullheads rampart. They standon their bosoms, with their tails tied together at the top. Their mouthsare abnormally distended, and the water gushes forth from their tonsils ina beautiful stream. 

The pose of these classical codfish or bullheads is sublime. In thespirited Graeco-Roman tussle which they seem to be having, with theirtails abnormally elevated in their artistic catch-as-catch-can or can-canscuffle, the designer has certainly hit upon a unique and beautifulimpossibility. 

Each bullhead also has a tin dipper chained to his gills, and through thelive-long day, till far into the night, he invites the cosmopolitan trampto come and quench his never-dying thirst. 

The frog pond is another celebrated watering place. I saw it in the earlypart of May, and if there had been any water in it, it would have been afine sight. Nothing contributes to the success of a pond like water. 

I ventured to say to a Boston man that I was a little surprised to find alittle frog pond containing neither frogs or pond, but he said I wouldfind it all right if I would call around during office hours. 

While sitting on one of the many seats which may be found on the Commonone morning, I formed the acquaintance of a pale young man, who asked meif I resided in Boston. I told him that while I felt flattered to thinkthat I could possibly fool anyone, I must admit that I was only a pilgrimand a stranger. 

He said that he was an old resident, and he had often noticed that thepeople of the Hub always Spoke to a Felloe till he was tired. I afterwardlearned that he was not an actual resident of Boston, but had justcompleted his junior year at the State asylum for the insane. He was sentthere, it seems, as a confirmed case of unjustifiable Punist. Thereforethe governor had Punist him accordingly. This is a specimen of ourcapitalized joke with Queen Anne do-funny on the corners. We are shippinga great many of them to England this season, where they are greedilysnapped up and devoured by the crowned heads. It is a good hot weatherjoke, devoid of mental strain, perfectly simple and may be laughed at ornot without giving the slightest offense. 

Drunk in a Plug Hat. 

This world is filled with woe everywhere you go. Sorrow is piled up in thefence corners on every road. Unavailing regret and red-nosed remorseinhabit the cot of the tie-chopper as well as the cut-glass cage of themillionaire. The woods are full of disappointment. The earth is convulsedwith a universal sob, and the roads are muddy with tears. But I do notcall to mind a more touching picture of unavailing misery and ruin, andhopeless chaos, than the plug hat that has endeavored to keep sober andmaintain self-respect while its owner was drunk. A plug hat can standprosperity, and shine forth joyously while nature smiles. That's the placewhere it seems to thrive. A tall silk hat looks well on a thrifty man witha clean collar, but it cannot stand dissipation. 

I once knew a plug hat that had been respected by everyone, and had wonits way upward by steady endeavor. No one knew aught against it till oneevening, in an evil hour, it consented to attend a banquet, and all atonce its joyous career ended. It met nothing but distrust and cold neglecteverywhere, after that. 

Drink seems to make a man temporarily unnaturally exhilarated. During thattemporary exhilaration he desires to attract attention by eating lobstersalad out of his own hat, and sitting down on his neighbor's. 

The demon rum is bad enough on the coatings of the stomach, but it is evenmore disastrous to the tall hat. A man may mix up in a crowd and carry offan overdose of valley tan in a soft hat or a cap, but the silk hat willproclaim it upon the house-tops, and advertise it to a gaping, wonderingworld. It has a way of getting back on the rear elevation of the head, orover the bridge of the nose, or of hanging coquettishly on one ear, thatsays to the eagle-eyed public: "I am chockfull. "

I cannot call to mind a more powerful lecture on temperance, than thesilent pantomime of a man trying to hang his plug hat on an invisible pegin his own hall, after he had been watching the returns, a few years ago. I saw that he was excited and nervously unstrung when he came in, but Idid not fully realize it until he began to hang his hat on the smoothwall. 

[Illustration: A POWERFUL LECTURE. ]

At first he laughed in a good-natured way at his awkwardness, and hung itup again carefully; but at last he became irritated about it, and almostforgot himself enough to swear, but controlled himself. Finding, however, that it refused to hang up, and that it seemed rather restless, anyhow, heput it in the corner of the hall with the crown up, pinned it to the floorwith his umbrella, and heaved a sigh of relief. Then he took off hisovercoat and, through a clerical error, pulled off his dress-coat also. Ishowed him his mistake and offered to assist him back into his apparel, but he said he hadn't got so old and feeble yet that he couldn't dresshimself. 

Later on he came into the parlor, wearing a linen ulster with the beltdrooping behind him like the broken harness hanging to a shipwrecked andstranded mule. His wife looked at him in a way that froze his blood. Thisstartled him so that he stepped back a pace or two, tangled his feet inhis surcingle, clutched wildly at the empty gas-light, but missed it andsat down in a tall majolica cuspidor. 

There were three games of whist going on when he fell, and there was agood deal of excitement over the playing, but after he had been pulled outof the American tear jug and led away, everyone of the twelvewhist-players had forgotten what the trump was. 

They say that he has abandoned politics since then, and that now he don'tcare whether we have any more November elections or not. I asked him onceif he would be active during the next campaign, as usual, and he said hethought not. He said a man couldn't afford to be too active in a politicalcampaign. His constitution wouldn't stand it. 

At that time he didn't care much whether the American people had apresident or not. If every public-spirited voter had got to work himselfup into a state of nervous excitability and prostration where reasontottered on its throne, he thought that we needed a reform. 

Those who wished to furnish reasons to totter on their thrones for theNational Central Committee at so much per tot, could do so; he, for one, didn't propose to farm out his immortal soul and plug hat to the party, ifsixty million people had to stand four years under the administration of asetting hen. 

Spring. 

Spring is now here. It has been here before, but not so much so, perhaps, as it is this year. In spring the buds swell up and bust. The "violets"bloom once more, and the hired girl takes off the double windows and thestorm door. The husband and father puts up the screen doors, so as to foolthe annual fly when he tries to make his spring debut. The husband andfather finds the screen doors and windows in the gloaming of the garret. He finds them by feeling them in the dark with his hands. He finds therafters, also, with his head. When he comes down, he brings the screensand three new intellectual faculties sticking out on his brow like thebutton on a barn door. 

Spring comes with joyous laugh, and song, and sunshine, and the burntsacrifice of the over-ripe boot and the hoary overshoe. The cowboy and thenew milch cow carol their roundelay. So does the veteran hen. The commonegg of commerce begins to come forth into the market at a price where itcan be secured with a step-ladder, and all nature seems tickled. 

There are four seasons--spring, summer, autumn and winter. Spring is themost joyful season of the year. It is then that the green grass and thelavender pants come forth. The little robbins twitter in the branches, andthe horny-handed farmer goes joyously afield to till the soil till thecows come home. --_Virgil_. 

We all love the moist and fragrant spring. It is then that the sunlightwaves beat upon the sandy coast, and the hand-maiden beats upon the sandycarpet. The man of the house pulls tacks out of himself and thinks of daysgone by, when you and I were young, Maggie. Who does not leap and sing inhis heart when the dandelion blossoms in the low lands, and the tremuloustail of the lambkin agitates the balmy air?

The lawns begin to look like velvet and the lawn-mower begins to warm itsjoints and get ready for the approaching harvest. The blue jay fills theforest with his classical and extremely _au revoir_ melody, and thecurculio crawls out of the plum-tree and files his bill. The plow-boy putson his father's boots and proceeds to plow up the cunning little angleworm. Anon, the black-bird alights on the swaying reeds, and thelightning-rod man alights on the farmer with great joy and a new rod thatcan gather up all the lightning in two States and put it in a two-gallonjug for future use. 

Who does not love spring, the most joyful season of the year? It is thenthat the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit andmakes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. The lowshoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The littlestriped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searchingfor the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life andactivity. So is the man with the linen pantaloons. Anon, the thrush willsing in the underbrush, and the prima donna will do up her voice in ared-flannel rag and lay it away. 

I go now into my cellar to bring out the gladiola bulb and the homesickturnip of last year. Do you see the blue place on my shoulder? That iswhere I struck when I got to the foot of the cellar stairs. The gladiolabulbs are looking older than when I put them away last fall. I fear methey will never again bulge forth. They are wrinkled about the eyes andthere are lines of care upon them. I could squeeze along two years withoutthe gladiola and the oleander in the large tub. If I should give my littleboy a new hatchet and he should cut down my beautiful oleander, I wouldgive him a bicycle and a brass band and a gold-headed cane. 

 O spring, spring, You giddy young thing. [1]

[Footnote 1: From poems of passion and one thing another, by the author ofthis sketch. ]

The Duke of Rawhide. 

"I believe I've got about the most instinct bulldog in the United States, "said Cayote Van Gobb yesterday. "Other pups may show cuteness and cunning, you know, but my dog, the Duke of Rawhide Buttes, is not only generallysmart, but he keeps up with the times. He's not only a talented cuss, buthis genius is always fresh and original. "

"What are some of his specialties, Van?" said I. 

"Oh, there's a good many of 'em, fust and last. He never seems to becontent with the achievements that please other dogs. You watch him andyou'll see that his mind is active all the time. When he is still he'sworking up some scheme or another, that he will ripen and fructify lateron. 

"For three year's I've had a watermelon patch and run it with more or lesssuccess, I reckon. The Duke has tended to 'em after they got ripe, and Iwas going to say that it kept his hands pretty busy to do it, but, to bemore accurate, I should say that it kept his mouth full. Hardly a nightafter the melons got ripe and in the dark of the moon, but the Dude wouldsample a cowboy or a sheep-herder from the lower Poudre. Watermelons weregenerally worth ten cents a pound along the Union Pacific for the firsttwo weeks, and a fifty-pounder was worth $5. That made it an object tokeep your melons, for in a good year you could grow enough on ten acres topay off the national debt. 

"Well, to return to my subject. Duke would sleep days during the seasonand gather fragments of the rear breadths of Western pantaloons at night. One morning Duke had a piece of fancy cassimere in his teeth that I triedto pry out and preserve, so that I could identify the owner, perhaps, buthe wouldn't give it up. I coaxed him and lammed him across the face andeyes with an old board, but he wouldn't give it to me. Then I watched him. I've been watchin' him ever since. He took all these fragments of goods Ifound, over into the garret above the carriage shed. 

"Yesterday I went in there and took a lantern with me. There on the floorthe Duke of Rawhide had arranged all the samples of Rocky Mountainpantaloons with a good deal of taste, and I don't suppose you'd believeit, but that blamed pup is collecting all these little scraps to makehimself a crazy quilt. 

"You can talk about instinct in animals, but, so far as the Duke ofRawhide Buttes is concerned, it seems to me more like all-wool genius ayard wide. "

[Illustration]

Etiquette at Hotels. 

Etiquette at hotels is a subject that has been but lightly treated upon byour modern philosophy, and yet it is a subject that lies very near toevery American heart. Had I not already more reforms on hand than I canpossibly successfully operate I would gladly use my strong socialinfluence and trenchant pen in that direction. Etiquette at hotels, bothon the part of the proprietor, and his hirelings, and the guest, is amatter that calls loudly for improvement. 

The hotel waiter alone, would well repay a close study. From the tardy andpolished loiterer of the effete East, to the off-hand and social equal ofthe budding West, all waiters are deserving of philosophical scrutiny. Iwas thrown in contact with a waiter in New York last summer, whose mannerswere far more polished than my own. Every time I saw him standing therewith his immediate pantaloons and swallow-tail coat, and the far-away, chastened look of one who had been unfortunate, but not crushed, I feltthat I was unworthy to be waited upon by such a blue-blooded thoroughbred, and I often wished that we had more such men in Congress. And when hewould take my order and go away with it, and after the meridian of my lifehad softened into the mellow glory of the sere and yellow leaf, when hecame back, still looking quite young, and never having forgotten me, recognizing me readily after the long, dull, desolate years, I was glad, and I felt that he deserved something more than mere empty thanks and Isaid to him: "Ah, sir, you still remember me after years of privation andsuffering. When every one else in New York has forgotten me, with theexception of the confidence man, you came to me with the glad light ofrecognition in your clear eye. Would you be offended if I gave you thistrifling testimonial of my regard?" at the same time giving him my note atthirty days. 

I wanted him to have something by which to always remember me, and I guesshe has. 

Speaking of waiters, reminds me of one at Glendive, Montana. We had totelegraph ahead in order to get a place to sleep, and when we registeredthe landlord shoved out an old double-entry journal for us to record ournames and postoffice address in. The office was the bar and before wecould get our rooms assigned us, we had to wait forty-five minutes for thelandlord to collect pay for thirteen drinks and lick a personal friend. Finally, when he got around to me, he told me that I could sleep in thenight bar-tender's bed, as he would be up all night, and might possiblyget killed and never need it again, anyhow. It would cost me $4 cash inadvance to sleep one night in the bartender's bed, he said, and the housewas so blamed full that he and his wife had got to wait till things kindof quieted down, and then they would have to put a mattress on the 15 ballpool table and sleep there. 

I called attention to my valuable valise that had been purchased at greatcost, and told him that he would be safe to keep that behind the bar tillI paid; but he said he wasn't in the second-hand valise business, and so Ipaid in advance. It was humiliating, but he had the edge on me. 

At the tea table I noticed that the waiter was a young man who evidentlyhad not been always thus. He had the air of one who yearns to have someone tread on the tail of his coat. Meekness, with me, is one of mycharacteristics. It is almost a passion. It is the result of personalinjuries received in former years at the hands of parties who excelled mein brute force and who succeeded in drawing me out in conversation, as itwere, till I made remarks that were injudicious. 

So I did not disagree with this waiter, although I had grounds. When hecame around and snorted in my ear, "Salt pork, antelope and cold beans, "at the same time leaning his full weight on my back, while he evaded therevenue laws by retailing his breath to the guests without a license, Ithought I would call for what he had the most of, so I said if he didn'tmind and it wouldn't be too much trouble, I would take cold beans. 

I will leave it to the calm, impassionate and unpartisan reader to statewhether that remark ought to create ill-feeling. I do not think it ought. However, he was irritable, and life to him seemed to be cold and dark. Sohe went to the general delivery window that led into the cold beanlaboratory, and remarked in a hoarse, insolent, and ironical tone ofvoice:

"Nother damned suspicious looking character wants cold beans. "

Fifteen Years Apart. 

The American Indian approximates nearer to what man should be--manly, physically perfect, grand in character, and true to the instincts of hisconscience--than any other race of beings, civilized or uncivilized. Wheredo we hear such noble sentiments or meet with such examples of heroism andself-sacrifice as the history of the American Indian furnishes? Whereshall we go to hear again such oratory as that of Black Hawk and Logan?Certainly the records of our so-called civilization do not furnish it, andthe present century is devoid of it. 

They were the true children of the Great Spirit. They lived nearer to thegreat heart of the Creator than do their pale-faced conquerors of to-daywho mourn over the lost and undone condition of the savage. Courageous, brave and the soul of honor, their cruel and awful destruction from theface of the earth is a sin of such magnitude that the relics and thepeople of America may well shrink from the just punishment which is sureto follow the assassination of as brave a race as ever breathed the air ofHeaven. 

[Illustration: AT FIFTEEN. ]

I wrote the above scathing rebuke of the American people when I was 15years of age. I ran across the dissertation yesterday. As a general rule, it takes a youth 15 years of age to arraign Congress and jerk theadministration bald-headed. The less he knows about things generally, themore cheerfully will he shed information right and left. 

At the time I wrote the above crude attack upon the government, I had notseen any Indians, but I had read much. My blood boiled when I thought ofthe wrongs which our race had meted out to the red man. It was at the timewhen my blood was just coming to a boil that I penned the above paragraph. Ten years later I had changed my views somewhat, relative to the Indian, and frankly wrote to the government of the change. When I am doing theadministration an injustice, and I find it out, I go to the presidentcandidly, and say: "Look here, Mr. President, I have been doing you awrong. You were right and I was erroneous. I am not pig-headed andstubborn. I just admit fairly that I have been hindering theadministration, and I do not propose to do so any more. "

So I wrote to Gen. Grant and told him that when I was 15 years of age Iwrote a composition at school in which I had arraigned the people and theadministration for the course taken toward the Indians. Since that time Ihad seen some Indians in the mountains--at a distance--and from what I hadseen of them I was led to believe that I had misjudged the people and theexecutive. I told him that so far as possible I would like to repair thegreat wrong so done in the ardor of youth and to once more sustain the armof the government. 

He wrote me kindly and said he was glad that I was friendly with thegovernment again, and that now he saw nothing in the way of continuednational prosperity. He said he would preserve my letter in the archivesas a treaty of peace between myself and the nation. He said only the daybefore he had observed to the cabinet that he didn't care two cents abouta war with foreign nations, but he would like to be on a peace footingwith me. The country could stand outside interference better thanintestine hostility. I do not know whether he meant anything personal bythat or not. Probably not. 

He said he remembered very well when he first heard that I had attackedthe Indian policy of the United States in one of my school essays. Hestill called to mind the feeling of alarm and apprehension which at thattime pervaded the whole country. How the cheeks of strong men had blanchedand the Goddess of Liberty felt for her back hair and exchanged her MotherHubbard dress for a new cast-iron panoply of war and Roman hay knife. Oh, yes, he said, he remembered it as though it had been yesterday. 

Having at heart the welfare of the American people as he did, he hopedthat I would never attack the republic again. 

And I never have. I have been friendly, not only personally, butofficially, for a good while. Even if I didn't agree with some of theofficial acts of the president I would allow him to believe that I didrather than harass him with cold, cruel and adverse criticism. Theabundant success of this policy is written in the country's wonderfulgrowth and prosperous peace. 

Dessicated Mule. 

The red-eyed antagonist of truth is not found alone in the ranks of thenewspaper phalanx. You run up against him in all walks of life. Heflourishes in all professions, and he is ready at all times to entertain. There is quite a difference between a malicious falsehood and thedifferent shades of parables, fables with a moral, Sabbath-school books, newspaper sketches, and anecdotes told to entertain. 

A malicious lie is injurious personally. A business lie is a falsehood forrevenue only. But the yarns that are spun around camp-fires, in mining andlogging camps, to while away a dull evening, are not within thejurisdiction of the criminal code or the home missionary. 

On the train, yesterday several old lumbermen were telling about hardroads and steep hills, engineering skill and so forth. Finally they toldabout "snubbing" a loaded team down bad hills, and one man said:

"You might 'snub' down a cheap hill, but you couldn't do it on our road. We tried it. Couldn't do a thing. Finally we got to building snow-shedsand hauling sand. You build a snow-shed that covers the grade, then fillthe road in with two feet of loose sand, and you're O. K. We did that lastwinter, and when you drive a four-horse load of logs down through themlong snow-sheds on bare ground, mind ye, and the bobs go plowing throughthe sand, the sled-shoes will make the fire fly so that you can read thePresident's message at midnight. "

Then an old man who went to Pike's Peak during the excitement and returnedafterward, woke up and yawned two or three times, and said they used tohave some trouble, a good many years ago getting over the range where theSouth Park road now goes from Chalk Creek Canon through Alpine Tunnel tothe Gunnison. 

"We tried 'snubbing' and everything we could think of, but it was N. G. 

"Finally we got hold of a new kind of 'snub' that worked pretty well. Wehad a long table made a-purpose, that would reach to the foot of the hillfrom the top, and we'd tie a three-ton load to the end at the top of thehill; then we would hitch six mules to the end at the foot of the hill. Well, the principle of the thing was, that as the load went down on theGunnison side it would pull the mules up the opposite side, tails first. "

"How did it work?"

"Oh, it worked all right if the mules and the load balanced; but one daywe put on a light mule named Emma Abbott, and the load got a start downthe Gunnison side that made that old cable sing. The wagon tipped over andconcussed a keg of blasting powder, and that obliterated the rest of thegoods. 

"But the air on the other side was full of mules. You ought to seen 'emcome up that hill!

"It takes considerable of a crisis to affect the natural reserve of sixmules; but when they saw how it was, they backed up that mountain withgreat enthusiasm. They didn't touch the ground but once in three thousandfeet, but they struck the canopy of heaven several times. 

"When the sky cleared up, we made a careful inventory of the stock. 

"We had a second-hand three-inch cable and some desiccated mule. We neverwent to look for the wagon; but when the weather got warm, the Coyoteshelped us find Emma Abbott. 

"She was hanging by the ear in the crotch of an old hemlock tree. 

"Life was extinct. 

"We found a few more of the mules, but they were fractional. 

"Emma Abbott was the only complete mule we found. "

Time's Changes. 

I fixed myself and went out trout fishing on the only originalKinnickinnick river last week. It was a kind of Rip Van Winkle picnic andfarewell moonlight excursion home. I believe that Rip Van Winkle, however, confined himself to hunting mostly with an old musket that was on theretired list when Rip took his sleepy drink on the Catskills. If he couldhave gone with me fishing last week over the old trail, diggingangle-worms at the same old place where I left the spade sticking in thegrim soil twenty years ago--if we could have waded down the Kinnickinnicktogether with high rubber boots on, and got nibbles and bites at the sameplaces, and found the same old farmers with nearly a quarter of a centuryadded to their lives and glistening in their hair, we would have had funno doubt on that day, and a headache on the day following. This affords mean opportunity to say that trout may be caught successfully without acorkscrew. I have tried it. I've about decided that the main reason why somany large lies are told about the number of trout caught all over thecountry, is that at the moment the sportsman pulls his game out of thewater, he labors under some kind of an optical illusion, by reason ofwhich he sees about nine trout where he ought to see only one. 

I wish I had as many dollars as I have soaked deceased angle-worms in thatsame beautiful Kinnickinnick. There was a little stream made into it thatwe called Tidd's creek. It is still there. This stream runs across Tidd'sfarm, and Tidd twenty years ago wouldn't allow anybody to fish in thecreek. I can still remember how his large hand used to feel, as he caughtme by the nape of the neck and threw me over the fence with my amateurfishing tackle and a willow "stringer" with eleven dried, stiff trout onit. Last week I thought I would try Tidd's creek again. It was always agood place to fish, and I felt the same old excitement, with just enoughvague forebodings in it to make it pleasant. Still, I had grown a foot orso since I used to fish there, and perhaps I could return the complimentby throwing the old gentleman over his own fence, and then hiss in his ear"R-r-r-r-e-v-e-n-g-e!!!"

[Illustration: I BECAME MORE FEARLESS. ]

I had got pretty well across the "lower forty" and had about decided thatTidd had been gathered to his fathers, when I saw him coming with his headup like a steer in the corn. Tidd is a blacksmith by trade, and he has anarm with hair on it that looks like Jumbo's hind leg. I felt the same olddesire to climb the fence and be alone. I didn't know exactly how to workit. Then I remembered how people had remarked that I had changed very muchin twenty years, and that for a homely boy I had grown to be a remarkablypicturesque-looking man. I trusted to Tidd's failing eyesight and said:

"How are you?"

He said, "How are you?" That did not answer my question, but I didn't minda little thing like that. 

Then he said: "I sposed that every pesky fool in this country knew I don'tallow fishing on my land. "

"That may be, " says I, "but I ain't fishing on your land. I always fish ina damp place if I can. Moreover, how do I know this is your land? Carryingthe argument still further, and admitting that every peesky fool knowsthat you didn't allow fishing here, I am not going to be called a peskyfool with impunity, unless you do it over my dead body. " He stopped aboutten rods away and I became more fearless. "I don't know who you are, " saidI, as I took off my coat and vest and piled them up on my fish basket, eager for the fray. "You claim to own this farm, but it is my opinion thatyou are the hired man, puffed up with a little authority. You can't orderme off this ground till you show me a duly certified abstract of title andthen identify yourself. What protection does a gentleman have if he is tobe kicked and cuffed about by Tom, Dick and Harry, claiming they own thewhole State. Get out! Avaunt! If you don't avaunt pretty quick I'll scrapyou and sell you to a medical college. "

He stood in dumb amazement a moment, then he said he would go and get hisdeed and his shotgun. I said shotguns suited me exactly, and I told him tobring two of them loaded with giant powder and barbed wire. I would notlive alway. I asked not to stay. When he got behind the corn-crib Iclimbed the fence and fled with my ill-gotten gains. 

The blacksmith in his prime may lick the small boy, but twenty yearschanges their relative positions. Possibly Tidd could tear up the groundwith me now, but in ten more years, if I improve as fast as he fails, Ishall fish in that same old stream again. 

Letter From New York. 

Dear friend. --Being Sunday, I take an hour to write you a letter in regardto this place. I came here yesterday without attracting undue attentionfrom people who lived here. If they was surprised, they concealed it fromme. 

I've camped out on the Chug years ago, and went to sleep with no livething near me except my own pony, and woke up with the early song of thecoyote, and have been on the lonesome plain for days where it seemed to methat a hostile would be mighty welcome if he would only say something tome, but I was never so lonesome as I was here in this big town last night, although it is the most thick settled place I was ever at. 

I was so kind of low and depressed that I strolled in to the bar at last, allowing that I could pound on the counter and call up the boys and getacquainted a little with somebody, just as I would at Col. Luke Murrin's, at Cheyenne; but when I waved to the other parties, and told them to rallyround the foaming beaker, they apologized, and allowed they had just beento dinner. 

Just been to dinner, and there it was pretty blamed near dark! Then Iasked 'em to take a cigar, but they mostly cackillated they had nooccasion. 

I was mad, but what could I do? They was too many for me, and I couldn'tcoerce the white livered aristocratic mob, for quicker'n scat they couldhave hollored into a little cupboard they had there in the corner, and inless'n two minits they'd of had the whole police department and the hookand ladder company down there after me with a torch-light procession. 

So I swallowed my wrath and a tame drink of cultivated whiskey with ApolloBelvidere on the side, and went out into the auditorium of the hotel. 

Here I was very unhappy, being, as the editor of the Green River _Gazette_would say, "the cynosure of all eyes. "

I would rather not be a cynosure, even at a good salary; so I thought Iwould ask the proprietor to build a fire in my room. I went up to therecorder's office, where the big hotel autograft album is, and asked tosee the proprietor. 

A good-looking young man came forward and asked me what he could do forme. I said if it wouldn't be too much trouble, I wisht he would build alittle fire in my room, and I would pay him for it; or, if he would showme where the woodpile was, I would build the fire myself--I wasn't doinganything special at that time. 

He then whistled through his teeth and crooked his finger in a shrill toneof voice to a young party who was working for him, and told him to "builda fire in four-ought-two. "

I then sat down in the auditorium and read out of a railroad tract, whichundertook to show that a party that undertook to ride over a rival road, must do so because life was a burden to him, and facility, and comfort, and safety, and such things no object whatever. But still I was verylonely, and felt as if I was far, far away from home. 

I couldn't have been more uncomfortable if I'd been a young man I sawtwenty-five years ago on the old overland trail. He had gone out to studythe Indian character, and to win said Indian to the fold. When I next sawhim he was twenty miles farther on. He had been thrown in contact withsaid Indian in the meantime. I judged he had been making a collection ofIndian arrows. He was extremely no more. He looked some like SaintSebastian, and some like a toothpick-holder. 

I was never successfully lost on the plains, and so I started out aftersupper to find my room. I found a good many other rooms, and tried to getinto them, but I did not find four-ought-two till a late hour; then Isubsidized the night patrol on the third floor to assist me. 

This is a nice place to stop, but it is a little too rich for my blood, Iguess Not so much as regards price, but I can see that I am beginning toexcite curiosity among the boarders. People are coming here to board justbecause I am here, and it is disagreeable. I do not court notoriety. Ihave always lived in a plain way, and I would give a dollar if peoplewould look the other way while I eat my pie. 

Yours truly, E. O. D. 

To E. Wm. Nye, Esq. 

P. S. --This is not a dictated letter. I left my stenograffer and revolverat Pumpkin Buttes. 

E. O. D. 

Crowns and Crowned Heads. 

During the hot weather very few crowns are worn this season, and a fewhints as to the care of the crown itself may not be out of place. 

The crown should not be carelessly hung on the hat rack in the royal hallfor the flies to roost upon, but it should be thoroughly cleaned and putaway as soon as the weather becomes too hot to wear it comfortably. 

Great care should be used in cleaning a gold-plated crown, to avoidwearing out the plate. Take a good stiff tooth brush, with a littlesoapsuds, and clean the crown thoroughly at first, drying it on a cleantowel and taking care not to drop it on the floor and thus knock themoss-agate diadem loose. Next, get a sleeve of the royal undershirt, or, in case you can not procure one readily, the sleeve of a duke orright-bower may be used. Soak this in vinegar, and, with a coat ofwhiting, polish the crown thoroughly, wrap it in cotton-flannel and put inthe bureau. Sometimes, the lining of the crown becomes saturated withhair-oil from constant use and needs cleaning. In such cases the liningmay be removed, boiled in concentrated lye two hours, or until tender, andthen placed on the grass to bleach in the sun. 

Most crowns are size six-and-seven-eights, and they are thereforefrequently too large for the number six head of royalty. In such cases anewspaper may be folded lengthwise and laid inside the sweat-band of thecrown, thus reducing the size and preventing any accident by which his orher majesty might lose the crown in the coal-bin while doing chores. 

After the Fourth of July and other royal holidays, this newspaper may beremoved, and the crown will be found none too large for the imperial domeof thought. 

Sceptres may be cleaned and wrapped in woolen goods during the hot months. The leg of an old pair of pantaloons makes a good retort to run a sceptreinto while not in use. Never try to kill flies or drive carpet tacks withthe sceptre. It is an awkward tool at best, and you might 'easily knock athumb nail loose. Great care should also be taken of the royal robe. Donot use it for a lap robe while dining, nor sleep in it at night. Nothinglooks more repugnant than a king on the throne, with little white feathersall over his robe. 

It is equally bad taste to govern a kingdom in a maroon robe with whitehorse hairs all over it. 

[Illustration: A HARD-WORKING MONARCH. ]

I once knew a king who invariably curried his horses in his royal robes;and if the steeds didn't stand around to suit him, he would ever and anonwelt them in the pit of the stomach with his cast-iron sceptre. It wasgreatly to the interest of his horses not to incur the royal displeasure, as the reader has no doubt already surmised. 

The robe of the king should only be worn while his majesty is on thethrone. When he comes down at night, after his day's work, and goes outafter his coal and kindling-wood, he may take off his robe, roll it upcarefully, and stick it under the throne, where it will be out of sight. Nothing looks more untidy than a fat king milking a bobtail cow in aMother Hubbard robe trimmed with imitation ermine. 

My Physician. 

[An Open Letter. ]

Dear Sir: I have seen recently an open letter addressed to me, and writtenby you in a vein of confidence and strictly sub rosa. What you said was sostrictly confidential, in fact, that you published the letter in New York, and it was copied through the press of the country. I shall, therefore, endeavor to be equally careful in writing my reply. 

You refer in your kind and confidential note to your experience as aninvalid, and your rapid recovery after the use of red-hot Mexican peppertea in a molten state. 

But you did not have such a physician as I did when I had spinalmeningitis. He was a good doctor for horses and blind staggers, but he wasout of his sphere when he strove to fool with the human frame. Change ofscene and rest were favorite prescriptions of his. Most of his patientsgot both, especially eternal rest. He made a specialty of eternal rest. 

He did not know what the matter was with me, but he seemed to be willingto learn. 

My wife says that while he was attending me I was as crazy as a loon, butthat I was more lucid than the physician. Even with my little, shatteredwreck of mind, tottering between a superficial knowledge of how to poundsand and a wide, shoreless sea of mental vacuity, I still had the edge onmy physician, from an intellectual point of view. He is still practicingmedicine in a quiet kind of way, weary of life, and yet fearing to die andgo where his patients are. 

He had a sabre wound on one cheek that gave him a ferocious appearance. Hefrequently alluded to how he used to mix up in the carnage of battle, andhow he used to roll up his pantaloons and wade in gore. He said that ifthe tocsin of war should sound even now, or if he were to wake up in thenight and hear war's rude alarum, he would spring to arms and make tyrannytremble till its suspender buttons fell off. 

Oh, he was a bad man from Bitter Creek. 

One day I learned from an old neighbor that this physician did not haveanything to do with preserving the Union intact, but that he acquired thescar on his cheek while making some experiments as a drunk and disorderly. He would come and sit by my bedside for hours, waiting for this mortalityto put on immortality, so that he could collect his bill from the estate, but one day I arose during a temporary delirium, and extracting a slatfrom my couch I smote him across the pit of the stomach with it, while Ihissed through my clenched teeth:

"Physician, heal thyself. "

[Illustration: "PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF. "]

I then tottered a few minutes, and fell back into the arms of myattendants. If you do not believe this, I can still show you the clenchedteeth. Also the attendants. 

I had a hard time with this physician, but I still live, contrary to hisearnest solicitations. 

I desire to state that should this letter creep into the press of thecountry, and thus become in a measure public, I hope that it will createno ill-feeling on your part. 

Our folks are all well as I write, and should you happen to be on LakeSuperior this winter, yachting, I hope you will drop in and see us. Ourlatch string is hanging out most all the time, and if you will pound onthe fence I will call off the dog. 

I frequently buy a copy of your paper on the streets. Do you get themoney?

Are you acquainted with the staff of _The Century_, published in New York?I was in _The Century_ office several hours last spring, and the editorstreated me very handsomely, but, although I have bought the magazine eversince, and read it thoroughly, I have not seen yet where they said that"they had a pleasant call from the genial and urbane William Nye. " I donot feel offended over this. I simply feel hurt. 

Before that I had a good notion to write a brief epic on the "Warty Toad, "and send it to _The Century_ for publication, but now it is quitedoubtful. 

_The Century_ may be a good paper, but it does not take the pressdispatches, and only last month I saw in it an account of a battle that tomy certain knowledge occurred twenty years ago. 

All About Oratory. 

Twenty centuries ago last Christmas there was born in Attica, near Athens, the father of oratory, the greatest orator of whom history has told us. His name was Demosthenes. Had he lived until this spring he would havebeen 2, 270 years old; but he did not live. Demosthenes has crossed themysterious river. He has gone to that bourne whence no traveler returns. 

Most of you, no doubt, have heard about it. On those who may not haveheard it, the announcement will fall with a sickening thud. 

This sketch is not intended to cast a gloom over your hearts. It wasdesigned to cheer those who read it and make them glad they could read. 

Therefore, I would have been glad if I could have spared them the painwhich this sudden breaking of the news of the death of Demosthenes willbring. But it could not be avoided. We should remember the transitorynature of life, and when we are tempted to boast of our health, andstrength, and wealth, let us remember the sudden and early death ofDemosthenes. 

Demosthenes was not born an orator. He struggled hard and failed manytimes. He was homely, and he stammered in his speech; but before his deaththey came to him for hundreds of miles to get him to open their countyfairs and jerk the bird of freedom bald-headed on the Fourth of July. 

When Demosthenes' father died, he left fifteen talents to be dividedbetween Demosthenes and his sister. A talent is equal to about $1, 000. Ioften wish I had been born a little more talented. 

Demosthenes had a short breath, a hesitating speech, and his manners werevery ungraceful. To remedy his stammering, he filled his mouth full ofpebbles and howled his sentiments at the angry sea. However, Plutarch saysthat Demosthenes made a gloomy fizzle of his first speech. This did notdiscourage him. He finally became the smoothest orator in that country, and it was no uncommon thing for him to fill the First Baptist Church ofAthens full. There are now sixty of his orations extant, part of themwritten by Demosthenes and part of them written by his private secretary. 

When he started in, he was gentle, mild and quiet in his manner; but lateron, carrying his audience with him, he at last became enthusiastic. Hethundered, he roared, he whooped, he howled, he jarred the windows, hesawed the air, he split the horizon with his clarion notes, he tipped overthe table, kicked the lamps out of the chandeliers and smashed the bigbass viol over the chief fiddler's head. 

Oh, Demosthenes was business when he got started. It will be a long timebefore we see another off-hand speaker like Demosthenes, and I, for one, have never been the same man since I learned of his death. 

"Such was the first of orators, " says Lord Brougham. "At the head of allthe mighty masters of speech, the adoration of ages has consecrated hisplace, and the loss of the noble instrument with which he forged andlaunched his thunders, is sure to maintain it unapproachable forever. "

I have always been a great admirer of the oratory of Demosthenes, andthose who have heard both of us, think there is a certain degree ofsimilarity in our style. 

And not only did I admire Demosthenes as an orator, but as a man; and, though I am no Vanderbilt, I feel as though I would be willing to head asubscription list for the purpose of doing the square thing by hissorrowing wife, if she is left in want, as I understand that she is. 

I must now leave Demosthenes and pass on rapidly to speak of PatrickHenry. 

Mr. Henry was the man who wanted liberty or death. He preferred liberty, though. If he couldn't have liberty, he wanted to die, but he was in nogreat rush about it. He would like liberty, if there was plenty of it; butif the British had no liberty to spare, he yearned for death. When thetyrant asked him what style of death he wanted, he said that he wouldrather die of extreme old age. He was willing to wait, he said. He didn'twant to go unprepared, and he thought it would take him eighty or ninetyyears more to prepare, so that when he was ushered into another world hewouldn't be ashamed of himself. 

One hundred and ten years ago, Patrick Henry said: "Sir, our chains areforged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war isinevitable, and let it come. I repeat it, sir, let it come!"

In the spring of 1860, I used almost the same language. So did HoraceGreeley. There were four or five of us who got our heads together anddecided that the war was inevitable, and consented to let it come. 

Then it came. Whenever there is a large, inevitable conflict loafingaround waiting for permission to come, it devolves on the great statesmenand bald-headed _literati_ of the nation to avoid all delay. It was sowith Patrick Henry. He permitted the land to be deluged in gore, and thenhe retired. It is the duty of the great orator to howl for war, and thenhold some other man's coat while he fights. 

Strabusmus and Justice. 

Over in St. Paul I met a man with eyes of cadet blue and a terra cottanose. His eyes were not only peculiar in shape, but while one seemed toconstantly probe the future, the other was apparently ransacking thedreamy past. While one rambled among the glorious possibilities of theremote yet golden ultimately, the other sought the somber depths of thepreviously. 

He told me that years ago he had a mild case of strabismus and that botheyes seemed to glare down his nose till he got restless and had themoperated on. Those were the days when they used to fasten a crochet hookunder the internal rectus muscle and cut it a little with a pair ofoptical sheep shears. The effect of this course was to allow the eye todrift back to a direct line; but this man fell into the hands of a drunkensurgeon who cut the muscle too much, and thereby weakened it so that itgradually swung past the point it ought to have stopped at, and he sawwith horror that his eye was going to turn out and protrude, as it were, so that a man could hang his hat on it. The other followed suit, and thetwo orbs that had for years looked along the bridge of the terra cottanose, gradually separated, and while one looked toward next Christmas withfond anticipations, the other loved to linger over the remembrances oflast fall. 

This thing continued till he had to peer into the future with his off eyeclosed, and vice versa. 

It is needless to say that he hungered for the blood of that physician andsurgeon. He tried to lay violent hands on him and wipe up the ground withhim and wear him out across a telegraph pole. But the authorities alwaysprevented the administration of swift and lawful justice. 

Time passed on, till one night the abnormal wall-eyed man loosened a boardin the sidewalk up town so that the physician and surgeon caught his footin it and caused an oblique fracture of the scapula, pied his dura mater, busted his cornucopia and wrecked his sarah-bellum. 

Perhaps I am in error as to some of these medical terms and theirorthography, but that is about the way the man with the divergent orbstold it to me. 

The physician and surgeon was quite a ruin. He had to wear clapboards onhimself for months, and there were other doctors, and laudable pus andthreatened gangrene and doctors' bills, with the cemetery looming up inthe near future. Day after day he took his own anti-febrile drinks, andrammed his busted system full of iron and strychnine and beef tea anddover's powders and hypodermic squirt till he wished he could die, butdeath would not come. He pawed the air and howled. They fed him his ownnux vomica, tincture of rhubarb and phosphates and gruel, and brought himback to life with a crooked collar bone, a shattered shoulder blade and alook of woe. 

Then he sued the town for $50, 000 damages because the sidewalk wasimperfect, and the wild-eyed man with the inflamed nose got on the jury. 

I will not explain how it was done, but there was a verdict for defendantwith costs on the Esculapian wreck. The man with the crooked vision is nothandsome, but he is very happy. He says the mills of the gods grindslowly, but they pulverise middling fine. 

A Spencerian Ass. 

After I had accumulated a handsome competence as city editor of the oldMorning _Sentinel_ at Laramie City, and had married and gone tohousekeeping with a gas stove and other luxuries, my place on the_Sentinel_ was taken by a newspaper man named Hopkins, who had justgraduated from a business college, and who brought a nice glazed gripsack and a diploma with him that had never been used. 

Hopkins wrote a fine Spencerian hand and wore a black and tan dogwhere-ever he went. The boys were willing to overlook his copper-platehand, but they drew the line at the dog. He not only wrote in beautifulstyle, but he copied his manuscript, so that when it went in to theprinter it was as pretty as a wedding invitation. 

[Illustration: HE THREW ME OUT. ]

Hopkins ran the city page nine days, and then he came into the city hallwhere I was trying a simple drunk and bade me adieu. 

I just say this to show how difficult it is for a fine penman to get aheadas a journalist. Of course good, readable writers like Knox and JohnHancock may become great, but they have to be men of sterling ability tostart with. 

I have some of the most bloodcurdling horrors preserved for the purpose ofshowing Hopkins' wonderful and vivid style. I will throw them in. 

"A little son of our esteemed fellow townsman, J. H. Hayford, sufferedgreatly last evening with virulent colic, but this A. M. , as we go topress, is sleeping easily. "

Think of shaking the social foundations of a mountain mining and stocktown with such grim, nervous prostrators as that! The next day he startledSouthern Wyoming and Northern Colorado and Utah with the maddeningstatement that "our genial friend, Leopold Gussenhoven's fine, yellow dog, Florence Nightingale, had been seriously threatened with insomnia. "

That was the style of mental calisthenics he gave us in a town where deathby opium and ropium was liable to occur, and where five men with theirMexican spurs on climbed one telegraph pole in one night and saunteredinto the remote indefinitely. Hopkins told me that he had tried to do whatwas right, but that he had not succeeded very well. He wrung my hand andsaid:

"I have tried hard to make the _Sentinel_ fill a long want felt, but Ihave not been fortunate. The foreman over there is a harsh man. He used tocome in and intimate in a frowning and erect tone of voice, that if I didnot produce that copy p. D. Q. , or some other abbreviation or other, that hewould bust my crust, or words of like import. 

"Now that's no way to talk to a man of a nervous temperament who isengaged in copying a list of hotel arrivals, and shading the capitals as Iwas. In the business college it was not that way. Everything was quiet, and there was nothing to jar a man like that. 

"Of course I would like to stay on the _Sentinel_ and draw the princelysalary, but there are two hundred reasons why I cannot do it. So far asthe physical effort is concerned, I could draw the salary with one handtied behind me, but there is too much turmoil and mad haste in dailyjournalism to suit me, and another thing, the proprietor of the _Sentinel_this morning stole up behind me and struck me over the head with awrought-iron side stick weighing ten pounds. If I had not concealed a coilspring in my plug hat, the blow would have been deleterious to me. 

"Then he threw me out of the door against a total stranger, and flungpieces of coal at me and called me a copper-plate ass, and said that if Iever came into the office again he would assassinate me. 

"That is the principal reason why I have severed my connection with the_Sentinel_. "

As he said this, Mr. Hopkins took out a polka-dot handkerchief wiped awaya pearly tear the size of a walnut, wrung my hand, also the polka-dotwipe, and stole out into the great, horrid hence. 

Anecdotes of Justice. 

The justice of the peace is sometimes a peculiarity, and if someone doesnot watch him he will exceed his jurisdiction. It took a constable, asheriff, a prosecuting attorney and a club to convince a Wyoming justiceof the peace that he had no right to send a man to the penitentiary forlife. Another justice in Utah sentenced a criminal to be hung on thefollowing Friday between twelve and one o'clock of said day, but hecouldn't enforce the sentence. A Wisconsin justice of the peace granted adivorce and in two weeks married the couple over again--ten dollars forthe divorce and two dollars for the relapse. Another Badger justice bounda young man over to appear and answer at the next term of the CircuitCourt for the crime of chastity, and the evidence was entirelycircumstantial, too. 

Another one, when his first case came up, jerked a candle box aroundbehind the dining-room table, put his hat on the back of his head, borrowed a chew of tobacco from the prisoner and said: "Now, boys, thecourt's open. The first feller that says a word unless I speak to him willget paralyzed. Now tell your story. " Then each witness and the defendantreeled off his yarn without being sworn. The justice fined the defendantten dollars and made the complaining witness pay half the costs. Thejustice then took the fine and put it in his pocket, adjourned court, andin an hour was so full that it took six men to hold his house still longenough for him to get into the doors. 

A North Park justice of the peace and under-sheriff formed a partnershipyears ago for the purpose of supplying people with justice at New Yorkprices, and by doing a strictly cash business they dispensed with a gooddeal of justice, such as it was. 

It was a misdemeanor to kill game and ship it out of the State, and asthere was a good deal killed there, consisting of elk, antelope and blacktail deer especially, and as it could not be hauled out of the Park atthat season without going across the Wyoming line and back again into theState of Colorado, the under-sheriff would load himself down withwarrants, signed in blank, and station himself on horseback at the foot ofthe pass to the North. He would then arrest everybody indiscriminately whohad any fraction of a deer, antelope or elk on his wagon, try the casethen and there, put on a fine of $25 to $75, which if paid never reachedthe treasury, and then he would wait for another victim. The average manwould rather pay the fine than go back a hundred miles through themountains to stand trial, so the under-sheriff and justice thrived forsome time. But one day the under-sheriff served his patent automaticwarrant on a young man who refused to come down. The officer then drew oneof those large baritone instruments that generally has a coward at one endand a corpse at the other. He pointed this at the young man and assessed afine of $50 and costs. Instead of paying this fine, the youth, who wasquite nimble, but unarmed, knocked the bogus officer down with the buttend of his six-mule whip, took his self-cocking credentials away and litout. In less than a week the justice and his copper were in therefrigerator. 

I was once a justice of the peace, and a good many funny little incidentsoccurred while I held that office. I do not allude to my official lifehere in order to call attention to my glowing career, for thousands ofothers, no doubt, could have administered the affairs of the office aswell as I did, but rather to speak of one incident which took place whileI was a J. P. 

One night after I had retired and gone to sleep a milkman, called BillDunning, rang the bell and got me out of bed. Then he told me that a manwho owed him a milk bill of $35 was all loaded up and prepared to slipacross the line overland into Colorado, there to grow up with the countryand acquire other indebtedness, no doubt. Bill desired an attachment forthe entire wagon-load of goods and said he had an officer at hand to servethe writ. 

"But, " said I, as I wrapped a "welcome" husk door mat around my gloriousproportions, "how do you know while we converse together he is not winginghis way down the valley of the Paudre?"

"Never mind that, jedge, " says William. "You just fix the dockyments andI'll tend to the defendant. "

In an hour Bill returned with $35 in cash for himself and the entire costsof the court, and as we settled up and fixed the docket I asked BillDunning how he detained the defendant while we made out the affidavit bondand writ of attachment. 

"You reckollect, jedge, " says William, "that the waggin wheel is held ontothe exle with a big nut. No waggin kin go any length of time without thatthere nut onto the exle. Well, when I diskivered that what's-his-name waspacked up and the waggin loaded, I took the liberty to borrow one o' themthere nuts fur a kind of momento, as it were, and I kept that in my pockettill we served the writ and he paid my bill and came to his milk, ifyou'll allow me that expression, and then I says to him, 'Pardner, ' saysI, you are going far, far away where I may never see you again. Take thishere nut, ' says I, 'and put it onto the exle of the oft hind wheel of yourwaggin, and whenever you look at it hereafter, think of poor old BillDunning, the milkman. '"

The Chinese God. 

I presume that I shall not be accused of sacrilege in referring to theChinese god as an inferior piece of art. Viewed simply from an artisticand economical standpoint, it seems to me that the Chinaman should haveless pride in his bow-legged and inefficient god than in any othernational institution. 

I do not wish to be understood as interfering with any man's religiousviews; but when polygamy is made a divine decree, or a basswood deity iswhittled out and painted red, to look up to and to worship, I cannot treatthat so-called religious belief with courtesy and reverence. I am quiteliberal in all religious matters. People have noticed that and remarkedit, but the Oriental god of commerce seems to me to be greatly over-rated. He seems to lack that genuine decision of character which should be afeature of an over-ruling power. 

I ask the phrenologist to come with me and examine the head of the allegedJosh, and to state whether or not he believes that the properly balancedhead of a successful god should not have a more protuberant knob ofspirituality, and a less pronounced alimentiveness. Should the bump ofcombativeness hang out over the ear, while time, tune and calculation arenoticeably reticent? I certainly wot not. 

Again, how can the physiognomy of the Celestial Josh be consistent with amoral and temperate god? The low brow would not indicate a pronouncedomniscience, and the Jumbo ears and the copious neck would not impress mewith the idea of purity and spirituality. 

It is, no doubt, wrong to attack sacred matters for the purpose of gainingnotoriety; but I believe I am right, when I assert that the Chinese godmust go. We should not be Puritanical, but we might safely draw the lineat the bow-legged and sedentary goddess of leprosy. 

If Confucius bowed the suppliant knee to that goggle-eyed jim-jam Josh, I am grieved to know it. If such was the case, the friends of Confuciusshould keep the matter from me. I cannot believe that the greatphilosopher wallowed in the dust at the feet of such a polka-dotcarricature of a gorilla's horrid dream. 

I bought a Chinese god once, for four bits. He was not successful inthe profession which he aimed to follow. Whatever he may have been inChina, he was not a very successful god in the English language. I puthim upon the mantel, and the clock stopped, the servant girl sent inher resignation, and a large dog jumped through the parlor-window. Allthis happened within two hours from the time I erected the lop-eared, knocked-kneed and club-footed Oolong in my household. 

[Illustration: THE DOG EXITS. ]

Perhaps this may have been largely due to my ignorance of his habits. Possibly if I had been more familiar with his eccentricities, it wouldhave been all right; but as it was, there was no book of instructionsgiven with him, and I couldn't seem to make him work. 

During the week following, the prospect shaft of the New Jerusalem minestruck a subterranean gulf-stream and water-logged the stock, a tallyellow dog, under the weight of a great woe, picked out my cistern tosuicide in, and I skated down the cellar-stairs on my shoulder-bladesand the phrenological location known as Love of Home, in such a terriblemanner as to jar the foundations of the earth, and kick a large hole outof the bosom of the night. 

I then met with a change of heart, and overthrew the warty heathen god, and knocked him galley west. My hens at once began to watch the producemarket, and, noticing the high price of eggs, commenced to orate withgreat zeal instead of standing around with their hands in their pockets. Isaw the new moon over my right shoulder, and all nature seemed gay oncemore. 

The above are a few of my reasons for believing that the Chinese god iseither greatly over-estimated, or else shippers and producers are floodingthe market with fraudulent gods. 

A Great Spiritualist. 

I have an uncle who is a physician, and a very busy one at that. He is avery active man, and allows himself very little relaxation indeed. Howmany times he has said to me, "Well, I can't stand here and fool away mytime with you. I've got a typhoid fever patient down in the lower end oftown who will get well if I don't get over there this forenoon. "

He never allows himself any relaxation to speak of, except to demonstratethe truth of spiritualism. He does love to monkey with the supernatural, and he delights in getting hold of some skeptical friend and convincinghim of the presence of spirits beyond a doubt. I've known him to ignoretwo cases of croup and one case of twins to attend a seance and helpconvince a doubting Thomas on the spirit question. 

I believe that he and I, together with a little time in which to prepare, could convince the most skeptical. He says that with a friend to assisthim, who is _en rapport_, and who has a little practice, he can reach thestoniest heart. He is a very susceptible medium indeed, and created agreat furore in his own town. He said it was a great comfort to him toconverse with his former patients, and he felt kind of attached to them, so that he hated to be separated from them, even in death. 

Spiritualism had quite a run in his neighborhood at one time, as I havesaid. Even his own family yielded to the convincing proof and theastounding phenomena. If his wife hadn't found some of his spiritualtracks down cellar, she would have remained firm, no doubt, but the doctorforgot and left his step-ladder down there, and that showed where the holein the floor opened into his mysterious cabinet. 

He said if he had been a little more careful, no doubt he could haveconvinced anybody of the presence of spirits or anything else. He said hedidn't intend to give up as long as there was anything left in the cellar. 

He had such unwavering confidence in the phenomena that all he asked ofanybody was faith and a buckskin string about two feet long. 

He and his brother, a reformed member of Congress, read the inmostthoughts of a skeptical friend all one evening by the aid of supernaturalpowers and a tin tube. The reformed member of Congress acted as medium, and the doctor, who was unfortunately and ostensibly called away into thecountry early in the evening, remained at the window outside, where hecould read the queries written by the victim on a slip of paper. Then hewould run around the house and murmur the same through a tin tube atanother window by the medium's ear. 

It was astounding. The skeptical man would write some deep question on aslip of paper, and after the medium had felt of his brow, and groaned afew hollow groans, and rolled his eyes up, he would answer it withouthaving been within twenty feet of the question or the questioner. Thevictim said he would never doubt again. 

What a comfort it was to know that immortality was an established fact. Ifhe could have heard a man talking in a low tone of voice through an oldtin dipper handle, at the south window on the ground floor, andoccasionally swearing at a mosquito on the back of his neck, he would havehesitated. 

An old-timer over there said that Woodworth would be a mighty goodphysician if he would let spiritualism alone. He claimed that no man couldbe a great physician and surgeon and still be a fanatic on spiritualism. 

General Sheridan's Horse. 

I have always taken a great interest in war incidents, and more so, perhaps, because I wasn't old enough to put down the rebellion myself. Ihave been very eager to get hold of and hoard up in my memory all itsgallant deeds of both sides, and to know the history of those who figuredprominently in that great conflict has been one of my ambitions. 

I have also watched with interest the steady advancement of Phil Sheridan, the black-eyed warrior with the florid face and the Winchester record. Ihave also taken some pains to investigate the later history of the oldWinchester war horse. 

"Old Rienzi died in our stable a few years after the war, " said a Chicagolivery man to me, a short time ago. "General Sheridan left him with us andinstructed us to take good care of him, which we did, but he got old atlast, and his teeth failed upon him, and that busted his digestion, and hekind of died of old age, I reckon. "

"How did General Sheridan take it?"

"Oh, well, Phil Sheridan is no school girl. He didn't turn away when oldRienzi died and weep the manger full of scalding regret. If you knowSheridan, you know that he don't rip the blue dome of heaven wide openwith unavailing wails. He just told us to take care of its remains, pattedthe old cuss on the head a little and walked off. Phil Sheridan don't goaround weeping softly into a pink bordered wipe when a horse dies. Helikes a good horse, but Rienzi was no Jay-Eye-See for swiftness, and hewasn't the purtiest horse you ever see, by no means. "

"Did you read lately how General Sheridan don't ride on horseback sincehis old war horse died, and seems to have lost all interest in horses?"

"No, I never did. He no doubt would rather ride in a cable car or acarriage than to jar himself up on a horse. That's all likely enough, but, as I say, he's a matter of fact little fighter from Fighttown. Henever stopped to snoot and paw up the ground and sob himself intobronchitis over old Rienzi. He went right on about his business, and, like old King What's-His-name he hollered for another hoss, and the WarDepartment never slipped a cog. "

Later on I read that the old war horse was called Winchester and that hewas still alive in a blue grass pasture in Kentucky. The report said thatold Winchester wasn't very coltish, and that he was evidently failing. Igathered the idea that he was wearing store teeth, and that his memory wasa little deficient, but that he might live yet for years. After that I meta New York livery stable prince, at whose palace General Sheridan'swell-known Winchester war horse died of botts in '71. He told me allabout it and how General Sheridan came on from Chicago at the time, andheld the horse's head in his lap while the fleet limbs that flew fromWinchester down and saved the day, stiffened in the great, mysteriousrepose of death. He said Sheridan wept like a child, and as he told thetouching tale to me I wept also. I say I wept. I wept about a quart, Iwould say. He said also that the horse's name wasn't Winchester norRienzi; it was Jim. 

I was sorry to know it. Jim is no name for a war horse who won a victoryand a marble bust and a poem. You can't respect a horse much if his namewas Jim. 

After that I found out that General Sheridan's celebrated Winchester horsewas raised in Kentucky, also in Pennsylvania and Michigan; that he wentout as a volunteer private; that he was in the regular service prior tothe war, and that he was drafted, and that he died on the field of battle, in a sorrel pasture, in '73, in great pain on Governor's Island; that hewas buried with Masonic honors by the Good Templars and the Grand Army ofthe Republic; that he was resurrected by a medical college and dissected;that he was cremated in New Orleans and taxidermed for the Military Museumat New York. Every little while I run up against a new fact relative tothis noted beast. He has died in nine different States, and been buried inthirteen different styles, while his soul goes marching on. Evidently welive in an age of information. You can get more information nowadays, suchas it is, than you know what to do with. 

A Circular. 

To my friends, regardless of party. --Many friends having solicited me toapply for a foreign mission under the present administration, I havefinally consented to do so, and last week filed my application for suchmissions as might still remain vacant. 

To insure my appointment, much will remain for you to do. I now call uponmy friends to aid me by their united effort. I especially solicit the aidof my friends who have repeatedly heretofore promised it to me whiledrunk. 

[Illustration: PLENTY OF CORRESPONDENCE. ]

You will see at a glance that I can only make the application. You mustsupport it by your petitions and letters. It would be of little use forone man to write five thousand letters to the president, but if fivethousand people each write him a letter in which casual reference is madeto my social worth and 7-1/3 octave brain, it will make him pay attention. 

My idea would be for each of my friends to set aside one day in each weekto write to the president, opening it in a chatty way by asking him if hedoes not think we are having rather a backward spring, and what he isdoing for his cut worms now, and how his folks are, etc. , etc. Thengradually lead up to the statement that you think I would be an ornamentto the administration if I should go abroad and linger on a foreign strandat $2, 000 per linger and stationery. 

This will keep the president properly stirred up, and cause him to earnhis salary. The effect will be to secure the appointment at last, as youwill see if you persevere. 

I need not add that I will do what is right by my friends upon receivingmy commission. 

Do not neglect this suggestion because it comes to you in the form of acircular, but remember it and act upon it. Remember that, although thepresident is stubborn as Sam Hill, he will at last yield to fatigue, andwhen tired nature can hold out no longer, the last letter will drop fromhis nerveless hand and he will surrender. 

[Illustration: NURSING THE FIERY STEED. ]

Some of you will urge that I have been an offensive partisan, but when youcome to think it over I have not been so all-fired partisan. There havebeen days and days when it did not show itself very much. However, that isnot the point. I want your hearty indorsement and I want it to be entirelyvoluntary, and if you do not give it, and give it freely and voluntarily, you hadn't better ask me for any more favors. 

All the newspapers most heartily indorse me. The _Rocky Mountain Whoop_very truthfully says:

"Mr. Nye called at our office yesterday and subscribed for our paper. Weare proud to add him to our list of paid-up subscribers, and should herenew his subscription next year, paying in advance, we will cheerfullyrefer to it among other startling news. "

I have a scrap-book full of such indorsements as this, and now, if myfriends will peel their coats and write as they should, I can make thisadministration open its eyes. 

Several papers in Iowa have alluded to my being in town, and referred tothe fact that I had paid my bills while there. But press indorsementsalone are not sufficient. What is needed is the written testimony offriends and neighbors. No matter how poor or humble or worthless you maybe, write to Mr. Cleveland and tell him how much confidence you have inme, and if you can call to mind any little acts of kindness, or any timeswhen I have got up in the night to give you a dollar, or nurse a colickyhorse for you, throw that in. Throw it in anyhow. It will do no harm, andmay do much good. 

I can solemnly promise all my friends that if they will secure myappointment to a foreign country for four years, I will not return duringthat time. What more can I offer? I will stay longer if I am reappointed. I would do anything for my friends. 

Do not throw this circular carelessly aside. Read it carefully over andact upon it. Some of you are poor spellers, and will try to get out of itin that way. Others are in the penitentiary and cannot spare the time. Butto one and all I say, write, and write regularly, to the president. Do notwait for a reply from him, because he is pretty busy now; but he will betickled to death to hear from you, and anything you say about me will givehim great pleasure. 

N. B. --Please be careful not to inclose this circular in your letter to thepresident. 

The Photograph Habit. 

No doubt the photograph habit, when once formed, is one of the mostbaneful, and productive of the most intense suffering in after years, ofany with which we are familiar. Some times it seems to me that my wholelife has been one long, abject apology for photographs that I have shedabroad throughout a distracted country. 

Man passes through seven distinct stages of being photographed, each oneexceeding all previous efforts in that line. 

First he is photographed as a prattling, bald-headed baby, absolutelydestitute of eyes, but making up for this deficiency by a wealth of mouththat would make a negro minstrel olive green with envy. We often wonderwhat has given the average photographer that wild, hunted look about theeyes and that joyless sag about the knees. The chemicals and the indoorlife alone have not done all this. It is the great nerve tension andmental strain used in trying to photograph a squirming and dark red childwith white eyes, in such a manner as to please its parents. 

An old-fashioned dollar store album with cerebro-spinal meningitis, andfilled with pictures of half-suffocated children in heavily-starched whitedresses, is the first thing we seek on entering a home, and the last thingfrom which we reluctantly part. 

The second stage on the downward road is the photograph of the boy withfresh-cropped hair, and in which the stiff and protuberant thumb takes aleading part. 

Then follows the portrait of the lad, with strongly marked freckles and alook of hopeless melancholy. With the aid of a detective agency, I havesucceeded in running down and destroying several of these pictures whichwere attributed to me. 

Next comes the young man, 21 years of age, with his front hair plasteredsmoothly down over his tender, throbbing dome of thought. He does not careso much about the expression on the mobile features, so long as his lefthand, with the new ring on it, shows distinctly, and the string ofjingling, jangling charms on his watch chain, including the cute littlebasket cut out of a peach stone, stand out well in the foreground. If theyoung man would stop to think for a moment that some day he may becomeeminent and ashamed of himself, he would hesitate about doing this. 

Soon after, he has a tintype taken in which a young lady sits in thealleged grass, while he stands behind her with his hand lightly touchingher shoulder as though he might be feeling of the thrilling circumferenceof a buzz saw. He carries this picture in his pocket for months, and looksat it whenever he may be unobserved. 

Then, all at once, he discovers that the young lady's hair is not done upthat way any more, and that her hat doesn't seem to fit her. He then, in afickle moment, has another tintype made, in which another young woman, with a more recent hat and later coiffure, is discovered holding his hatin her lap. 

This thing continues, till one day he comes into the studio with his wife, and tries to see how many children can be photographed on one negative byholding one on each knee and using the older ones as a back-ground. 

The last stage in his eventful career, the old gentleman allows himself tobe photographed, because he is afraid he may not live through anotherlong, hard winter, and the boys would like a picture of him while he isable to climb the dark, narrow stairs which lead to the artist's room. 

Sadly the thought comes back to you in after years, when his grave isgreen in the quiet valley, and the worn and weary hands that have toiledfor you are forever at rest, how patiently he submitted while his daughterpinned the clean, stiff, agonizing white collar about his neck, andbrushed the velvet collar of his best coat; how he toiled up the long, dark, lonesome stairs, not with the egotism of a half century ago, butwith the light of anticipated rest at last in his eyes--obediently, as hewould have gone to the dingy law office to have his will drawn--and meeklyleft the outlines of his kind old face for those he loved and for whom hehad so long labored. 

It is a picture at which the thoughtless may smile, but it is full ofpathos, and eloquent for those who knew him best. His attitude is stiffand his coat hunches up in the back, but his kind old heart asserts itselfthrough the gentle eyes, and when he has gone away at last we do notcriticise the picture any more, but beyond the old coat that hunches up inthe back, and that lasted him so long, we read the history of a noblelife. 

Silently the old finger-marked album, lying so unostentatiously on thegouty centre table, points out the mile-stones from infancy to age, andback of the mistakes of a struggling photographer is portrayed thelaughter and the tears, the joy and the grief, the dimples and the grayhairs of one man's life-tine. 

Rosalinde. 

In answer to a former article relative to the dearth of woman here, we arenow receiving two to five letters per day from all classes and styles ofyoung, middle-aged and old women who desire to come to Wyoming. 

Some of them would like to come here to work and obtain an honestlivelihood, and some of them desire to come here and marry cattle kings. 

A recent letter from Michigan, written in lead pencil, and evidentlyduring hours when the writer should have been learning her geographylesson, is very enthusiastic over the prospect of coming out here whereone girl can have a lover for every day in the week. She signs herselfRosalinde, with a small r, and adds in a postscript that she "meansbusiness. "

Yes, Rosalinde, that's what we are afraid of. We had a kind of a vaguefear that you meant business, so we did not reply to your letter. Wyomingalready has women enough who write with a lead pencil. We are also prettywell provided with poor spellers, and we do not desire to ransack Michiganfor affectionate but sap-headed girls. 

Stay in Michigan, Rosalinde, until we write to you, and one of these dayswhen you have been a mother eight or nine times, and as you stand in thegolden haze in the back yard, hanging out damp shirts on an uncertainline, while your ripe and dewy mouth is stretched around a bass-woodclothes pin, you will thank us for this advice. 

Michigan is the place for you. It is the home of the Sweet Singer and theabiding place of the Detroit _Free Press_. We can't throw any suchinfluences around you here as those you have at your own door. 

Do not despair, Rosalinde. Some day a man, with a great, warm, manly heartand a pair of red steers, will see you and love you, and he will take youin his strong arms and protect you from the Michigan climate, just asdevotedly as any of our people here can. We do not wish to bemisunderstood in this matter. It is not as a lover that we have said somuch on the girl question, but in the domestic aid department, and when weget a long letter from a young girl who eats slate pencils and reads Ouidabehind her atlas, we feel like going over there to Michigan with a trunkstrap and doing a little missionary work. 

The Church Debt. 

I have been thinking the matter over seriously and I have decided that ifI had my life to live over again, I would like to be an eccentricmillionaire. 

I have eccentricity enough, but I cannot successfully push it without moremeans. 

I have a great many plans which I would like to carry out, in case I couldunite the two necessary elements for the production of the successfuleccentric millionaire. 

Among other things, I would be willing to bind myself and give propersecurity to any one who would put in money to offset my eccentricity, thatI would ultimately die. We all know how seldom the eccentric millionairenow dies. I would be willing to inaugurate a reform in that direction. 

I think now that I would endow a home for men whose wives are no longerable to support them. In many cases the wife who was at first able tosupport her husband comfortably, finally shoulders a church debt, and intrying to lift that she overworks and impairs her health so that shebecomes an invalid, while hor husband is left to pine away in solitude ordependent on the cold charities of the world. 

My heart goes out toward those men even now, and in case I should fill thegrave of the eccentric millionaire, I am sure that I would do the squarething by them. 

The method by which our wives in America are knocking the church debtsilly, by working up their husbands' groceries into "angel food" andselling them below actual cost, is deserving of the attention of ournational financiers. 

The church debt itself is deserving of notice in this country. Itcertainly thrives better under a republican form of government than anyother feature of our boasted civilization. Western towns spring upeverywhere, and the first anxiety is to name the place, the second toincur a church debt and establish a roller rink. 

After that a general activity in trade is assured. Of course the generalhostility of church and rink will prevent _ennui_ and listlessness, andthe church debt will encourage a business boom. Naturally the church debtcannot be paid without what is generally known through the West as the"festival and hooraw. " This festival is an open market where the ladiestrade the groceries of their husbands to other ladies' husbands, andeverybody has a "perfectly lovely time. " The church clears $2. 30, andthirteen ladies are sick all the next day. 

This makes a boom for the physicians and later on for the undertaker andgeneral tombist. So it will be seen that the Western town is right inestablishing a church debt as soon as the survey is made and the townproperly named. After the first church debt has been properly started, others will rapidly follow, so that no anxiety need be felt if the churchwill come forward the first year and buy more than it can pay for. 

[Illustration: PUGILISM IN RELIGION. ]

The church debt is a comparatively modern appliance, and yet it has beenproductive of many peculiar features. For instance, we call to mind theclergyman who makes a specialty of going from place to place as asuccessful debt demolisher. He is a part of the general system, just asmuch as the ice cream freezer or the buttonhole bouquet. 

Then there is a row or social knock-down-and-drag-out which goes alongwith the church debt. All these things add to the general interest, and toacquire interest in one way or another is the mission of the c. D. 

I once knew a most exemplary woman who became greatly interested in thewiping out of a church debt, and who did finally succeed in wiping out thedebt, but in its last expiring death struggle it gave her a wipe fromwhich she never recovered. She had succeeded in begging the milk and thecream, and the eggs and the sandwiches, and the use of the dishes and thesugar, and the loan of an oyster, and the use of a freezer and fiftybutton-hole bouquets to be sold to men who were not in the habit of wearingbouquets, but she could not borrow a circular artist to revolve the crankof the freezer, so she agitated it herself. Her husband had to go awayprior to the festivities, but he ordered her not to crank the freezer. Hehad very little influence with her, however, and so to-day he is awidower. The church debt was revived in the following year, and now thereisn't a more thriving church debt anywhere in the country. Only last weekthat church traded off $75 worth of groceries, in the form of asbestoscake and celluloid angel food, in such a way that if the original cost ofthe groceries and the work were not considered, the clear profit was $13, after the hall rent was paid. And why should the first cost of thegroceries be reckoned, when we stop to think that they were involuntarilyfurnished by the depraved husband and father. 

I must add, also, that in the above estimate doctors' bills and funeralexpenses are not reckoned. 

[Illustration]

A Collection of Keys. 

I'm getting to be quite a connoisseur of hotel keys as I get older. Forten years I have been collecting these mementoes of travel and cordingthem away in my key cabinet. Some have square brass tags attached to them, others have round ones. Still others affect the octagonal, the fluted, thehexagonal, the scalloped, the plain, the polished, the docorated, thechaste, the Etruscan, the metropolitan, the rural, the cosmopolitan, theshirred, the tucked, the biased, the high neck and long sleeve or the_decolette_ style of brass check. 

I have, so far, paid my bills, but I have not returned the keys to myroom. Hotel proprietors will please take notice and govern themselvesaccordingly. When my visit to a pleasant city has become a beautifulmemory only, I all at once sit down on something hard and find that it isthe key to my former room at the hotel. Sitting down on a key tag ofcorrugated brass, as big as a buckwheat pancake, would remind most anyoneof something or other. 

I generally leave my tooth-brush in my room and carry off the key as akind of involuntary swap, so far as the hotel proprietor is concerned, butI do not think it is a mutual benefit, particularly. I cannot use the keyto a hotel 500 miles away, and so far as a tooth-brush is concerned, itgenerally has pleasant associations only for the owner. A man is fond ofhis own toothbrush, but it takes years for him to love the tooth-brush ofa stranger. 

There are a good many associations attached to these keys, like the tags. They point backward to the rooms to which the keys belong. Here is a fatone that led to room number 33-1/2 in the Synagogue hotel. It was acheerful room, where the bell boy said an old man had asphyxiated himselfwith gas the previous week. I had never met the old man before, but thatnight, about 1 o'clock A. M. , I had the pleasure of his acquaintance. Hecame in a sad and reproachful way, and showed me how the post-mortempeople had disfigured him. Of course it was a little tough to be mutilatedby an inquest, but that's no reason why he should come back there andoccupy a room that I was paying for so that I could be alone. He showed mehow he blew out the gas, and told me how a man could successfully blowdown the muzzle of a shot-gun or a gas jet, but both of these weapons hada way of blowing back. 

I have a key that brings back to me the memory of a room that I lived intwo days at one time. I do not mean that I lived the two days at once, butthat at one period I occupied that room, partially, for two days and twonights, I say I partially occupied it, because I used to occupy it daysand share it nights with others; that is, I tried to occupy it nights. Itried to get the clerk to throw off something because I didn't have theexclusive use of the room. He wouldn't throw off anything. He even wantedto fight me because I said that the room was occupied before I got it andafter I left it. Finally, I told him that if he would throw a bed quiltover his diamond, so I could see him, I would fight him with buckwheatcakes at five-hundred miles. I took my position the next morning at theplace appointed, but he did not appear. 

Extracts from a Queen's Diary. 

January 1. --I awoke late this forenoon with a pain through the head and ataste of ennui in the mouth, which I can hardly account for. Can it be aresult of the party last evening? I ween it may be so. We had a lovelycard party last evening. It was very enjoyable, indeed. Whist was thegame. 

January 3. --Yesterday all day I was unable to leave my room, owing to aheadache and nervous prostration, caused by late hours and too muchcompany, the doctor said. It is too bad, and yet I do so much enjoy ourcard parties and the excitement of the game. To-night I am to take part ina little quiet game of draw poker, I think they call it. I have not hadany experience heretofore in the game, but trust I shall soon learn it. There has been some talk about £1 ante and £5 limit. I do not exactlyunderstand the terms. I hope it does not mean anything wrong. 

January 4. --Poker is an odd game, indeed. I think it quite exciting, though at first the odd terms rather confused me. I had not beenaccustomed to such phrases as "show down, " "bob-tail flush, " and "Kingfull. " I must ask Brown, as soon as his knees are able to be out, toexplain the meaning of these terms a little more fully to me. If poorBrown's knees are not better soon, I shall be on kneesy about him. [Herethe diary has the appearance of being blurred with tears. ] A bob-tailflush, I learn, is something very disagreeable to have. One gentleman saidlast evening that another bob-tail flush would certainly paralyze him. Igather from that that it is something like a hectic flush. I canunderstand the game called "old sledge, " and have become quite familiarwith such terms as "beg, " "gimmeone, " "I've got the thin one, " "how highis that?" "one horse on me, " "saw-off, " etc. , etc. , but poker is full ofsurprises. It seems so odd to see a gentleman "show out on a pair ofdeuces" and gather in upward of two pounds with great merriment, while theremainder of the party seem quite bored. One gentleman last evening showedout on a full hand with "treys at the head, " putting £3 12s. In his pursewith great glee, while another one of the party who had not shown up, butI am positive had a better hand, became so angered that he got up andkicked four front teeth out of the mouth of a favorite dog worth £20. Itook part in a spade flush during the evening and was quite successful, sothat I can easily pay my traveling expenses and have a few shillings tobuy ointment for poor Brown. It was my first winning, and made me quiverall over with excitement. The game is already very fascinating to me, andI am becoming passionately fond of it. 

January 6. --I have just learned fully what a bob-tail flush is. It cost me£50. I like information, but I do not like to buy it when it comes sohigh. I drew two to fill in a heart flush last evening, and advanced themoney to back up my judgment; but one of the hearts I drew was a club, which was entirely useless to me. I have sent out a sheriff with a bulldogto ascertain if he can find the whereabouts of the party who started thispoker game, I do not know when I have felt so bored. After that I was sotimid that I allowed a friend to walk off with £2 on a pair of deuces. Isaid to him that I called that a deuced bore, and he laughed heartily. 

I find that you should not be too ready to show by your countenancewhether you are bored or pleased in poker. Tour opponent will takeadvantage of it and play accordingly. It cost me £8 10s. To acquire aknowledge of this fact. If all the information I ever got had cost me asmuch as this poker wisdom, I would not now have two pennies to jingletogether in my purse. Still, we have had a good time, take it all in all, and I shall not soon forget the evenings we have spent here togetherbuying knowledge regardless of cost. I think I shall try to control mywild thirst for information awhile, however, till I can get some morefunds. 

[Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and on turning the book over we findthe royal signature at the foot of the last page, "The Queen of Spades. "]

Shorts. 

A Colorado burro has been shipped across the Atlantic and presented to thePrince of Wales. It is a matter of profound national sorrow that this wasnot the first American jackass presented to his Tallness, the Prince. 

At Omaha last week a barrel of sauer kraut rolled out of a wagon andstruck O'Leary H. Oleson, who was trying to unload it, with such force asto kill him instantly and to flatten him out like a kiln-dried codfish. Still, after thousands of such instances on record, there are manyscientists who maintain that sauer kraut is conducive to longevity. 

As an evidence of the healthfulness of mountain climate, the people ofDenver point to a man who came there in '77 without flesh enough to bait atrap, and now he puts sleeves in an ordinary feather-bed and pulls it onover his head for a shirt. People in poor health who wish to communicatewith the writer in relation to the facts above stated, are requested toenclose two unlicked postage stamps to insure a reply. 

At Ubet, M. T. , during the cold snap in January, one of the most inhumanoutrages known in the annals of crime was perpetrated upon a young man whowent West in the fall, hoping to make his pile in time to return in Mayand marry the New York heiress selected before he went. 

While stopping at the hotel, two frolicsome young women hired the porterto procure the young man's pantaloons at dead of night They then sewed upthe bottoms of the legs, threw the doctored garment back through thetransom and squealed "Fire!"

When he got into the hall he was vainly trying to stab one foot throughthe limb of his pantaloons while he danced around on the other and joinedin the general cry of "Fire!" The hall seemed filled with people, who wererunning this way and that, ostensibly seeking a mode of egress from theflames, but in reality trying to dodge the mad efforts of the young man, who was trying to insert himself in his obstinate pantaloons. 

He did not tumble, as it were, until the night watchman got a Babcock fireextinguisher and played on him. I do not know what he played on him. Verylikely it was, "Sister, what are the wild waves saying?"

Anyway, he staggered into his room, and although he could hear theaudience outside in their wild, tumultuous encore, he refused to comebefore the curtain, but locked his door and sobbed himself to sleep, How often do we forget the finer feelings of others and ignore theirsorrow while we revel in some great joy. 

"We. "

The world is full of literary people to-day, and they are divided intothree classes, viz: Those who have written for the press, those who arewriting for the press, and those who want to write for the press. Of thefirst, there are those who tried it and found that they could make more inhalf the time at something else, and so quit the field, and those whofailed to touch the great heart and pocketbook of the public, andtherefore subsided. Those who are writing for the press now, whetherputting together copy by the mile within the sound of the rumbling engineand press, or scattered through the country writing more at their leisure, find that they have to lay aside every weight and throw off all theincumbrances of the mossy past. 

One thing, however, still clings to the editor like a dab of paste on awhite vest or golden fleck of scrambled egg on a tawny moustache. Onerelic of barbarism rears in gaunt form amid the clash and hurry and rushof civilization, and in the dazzling light of science and smartness. 

It is "we. "

The budding editor of the rural civilizer for the first time peels hiscoat and sharpens his pencil to begin the work of changing the greatcurrent of public opinion. He is strong in his desire to knock error andwrong galley west. He has buckled on his armor to paralyze monopoly andpurify the ballot He has hitched up his pantaloons with a noble resolveand covered his table with virgin paper. 

He is young, and he is a little egotistical, also. He wants to say, "Ibelieve" so and so, but he can't. Perspiration breaks out all over him. Hebites his pencil, and looks up with his clenched hand in his hair. Theslimy demon of the editor's life is there, sitting on the cloth boundvolume containing the report of the United States superintendent of swinediseases. 

Wherever you find a young man unloading a Washington hand press to fill along-felt want, there you will find the ghastly and venomous "we, " readyto look over the shoulder of the timid young mental athlete. Wherever youfind a ring of printer's ink around the door knob, and the snowy towel onwhich the foreman wipes the pink tips of his alabaster fingers, you willfind the slimy, scaly folds of "we" curled up in some neighboring corner. 

From the huge metropolitan journal, whose subscribers could make or bust apresident, or make a blooming king wish he had never been born, down tothe obscure and unknown dodger whose first page is mostly electrotypehead, whose second and third pages are patent, whose news is eloquent ofthe dear dead past, whose fourth page ushers in a new baby, or heralds thecoming of the circus, or promulgates the fact that its giant editor has afelon on his thumb, the trail of the serpent "we" is over them all. It isall we have to remind us of royalty in America, with the exception, perhaps, of the case now and then where a king full busts a bob-tailflush. 

A Mountain Snowstorm. 

September does not always indicate golden sunshine, and ripening corn, andold gold pumpkin pies on the half-shell. We look upon it as the month ofglorious perfection in the handiwork of the seasons and the time when theripened fruits are falling; when the red sun hides behind the bronze andmisty evening, and says good night with reluctance to the beautifulharvests and the approaching twilight of the year. 

It was on a red letter day of this kind, years ago, that Wheeler andmyself started out under the charge of Judge Blair and Sheriff Baswell tovisit the mines at Last Chance, and more especially the Keystone, a goldmine that the Judge had recently become president of. The soft air ofsecond summer in the Rocky Mountains blew gently past our ears as we rodeup the valley of the Little Laramie, to camp the first night at the headof the valley behind Sheep Mountain. The whole party was full of joy. EvenJudge Blair, with the frosts of over sixty winters in his hair, brokeforth into song. That's the only thing I ever had against Judge Blair. Hewould forget himself sometimes and burst forth into song. 

The following day we crossed the divide and rode down the gulch into thecamp on Douglass Creek, where the musical thunder of the stamp millsseemed to jar the ground, and the rapid stream below bore away on itsturbid bosom the yellowish tinge of the golden quartz. It was a perfectday, and Wheeler and I blessed our stars and, instead of breathing the airof sour paste and hot presses in the newspaper offices, away in thevalley, we were sprawling in the glorious sunshine of the hills, playingdraw poker with the miners in the evening, and forgetful of the dailynewspaper where one man does the work and the other draws the salary. Itwas heaven. It was such luxury that we wanted to swing our hats and yelllike Arapahoes. 

The next morning we were surprised to find that it had snowed all nightand was snowing still. I never saw such flakes of snow in my life. Theycame sauntering through the air like pure, white Turkish towels fallingfrom celestial clothes-lines. We did not return that day. We played a fewgames of chance, but they were brief. We finally made it five cent ante, and, as I was working then for an alleged newspaper man who paid me $50per month to edit his paper nights and take care of his children daytimes, I couldn't keep abreast of the Judge, the Sheriff and the Superintendentof the Keystone. 

The next day we had to go home. The snow lay ankle-deep everywhere and theair was chilly and raw. Wheeler and I tried to ride, but the mountain roadwas so rough that the horses could barely move through the snow, draggingthe buggy after them. So we got out and walked on ahead to keep warm. Wegained very fast on the team, for we were both long-legged and measuredoff the miles like a hired man going to dinner. I wore a pair ofglove-fitting low shoes and lisle-thread socks. I can remember that yet. Iwould advise anyone going into the mines not to wear lisle-thread socksand low shoes. You are liable to stick your foot into a snow-bank or a mudhole and dip up too much water. I remember that after we had walkedthrough the pine woods down the mountain road a few miles, I noticed thatthe bottoms of my pantaloons looked like those of a drowned tramp I sawmany years ago in the morgue. We gave out after a while, waited for theteam, but decided that it had gone the other road. All at once it flashedover us that we were alone in the woods and the storm, wet, nearlystarved, ignorant of the road and utterly worn out!

[Illustration: IT WAS TOUGH. ]

It was tough!

I never felt so blue, so wet, so hungry, or so hopeless in my life. Wemoved on a little farther. All at once we came out of the timber. Therewas no snow whatever! At that moment the sun burst forth, we struck adeserted supply wagon, found a two-pound can of Boston baked beans, got anaxe from the load, chopped open the can, and had just finished thetropical fruit of Massachusetts when our own team drove up, and joy andhope made their homes once more in our hearts. 

We may learn from this a valuable lesson, but at this moment I do not knowexactly what it is. 

Lost Money. 

Most anyone could collect and tell a good many incidents about lost moneythat has been found, if he would try, but these cases came under my ownobservation and I can vouch for their truth. 

A farmer in the Kinnekinnick Valley was paid $1, 000 while he was loadinghay. He put it in his vest pocket, and after he had unloaded the hay hediscovered that he had lost it, and no doubt had pitched the whole loadinto the mow on top of it. He went to work and pitched it all out, ahandful at a time, upon the barn floor, and when the hired man's fork tinecame up with a $100 bill on it he knew they had struck a lead. He got itall. 

A man gave me two $5 bills once to pay a balance on some store teeth andasked me to bring the teeth back with me. The dentist was fifteen milesaway and when I got there I found I had lost the money. That was before Ihad amassed much of a fortune, so I went to the tooth foundry and told theforeman that I had started with $10 to get a set of teeth for an intimatefriend, but had lost the funds. He said that my intimate friend would, nodoubt, have to gum it awhile. Owing to the recent shrinkage in values hewas obliged to sell teeth for cash, as the goods were comparativelyuseless after they had been used one season. I went back over the sameroad the next day and found the money by the side of the road, although ahundred teams had passed by it. 

A young man, one spring, plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under, and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and, though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it wasdiscovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither theywere sent and redeemed. 

I lost a roll of a hundred dollars the spring of '82, and hunted my houseand the office through, in search for it, in vain. I went over the roadbetween the office and the house twenty times, but it was useless. I thenadvertised the loss of the money, giving the different denominations ofthe bills and stating, as was the case, that there was an elastic bandaround the roll when lost. The paper had not been issued more than an hourbefore I got my money, every dollar of it. It was in the pocket of myother vest. 

This should teach us, first, the value of advertising, and, secondly, theutter folly of two vests at the same time. 

Apropos of recent bank failures, I want to tell this one on James S. Kelley, commonly called "Black Jim. " He failed himself along in thefifties, and by a big struggle had made out to pay everybody but LoBartlett, to whom he was indebted in the sum of $18. He got this money, finally, and as Lo wasn't in town, Black Jim put it in a bank, the name ofwhich has long ago sunk into oblivion. In fact, it began the oblivionbusiness about forty-eight hours after Jim had put his funds in there. 

Meeting Lo on the street, Jim said:

"Your money is up in the Wild Oat Bank, Lo. I'll give you a check for it. "

"No use, old man, she's gone up. "

"No!!"

"Yes, she's a total wreck. "

Jim went over to the president's room. He knocked as easy as he could, considering that his breath was coming so hard. 

"Who's there?"

"It's Jim Kelley, Black Jim, and I'm in something of a hurry. "

"Well, I'm very busy, Mr. Kelley. Come again this afternoon. "

"That will be too remote. I am very busy myself. Now is the accepted time. Will you open the door or shall I open it. "

The president opened it because it was a good door and he wanted topreserve it. 

Black Jim turned the key in the door and sat down. 

"What did you want of me?" says the president

"I wanted to see you about a certificate of deposit I've got here on yourbank for eighteen dollars. "

"We can't pay it. Everything is gone. "

"Well, I am here to get $18 or to leave you looking like a giblet pie. Eighteen dollars will relieve you of this mental strain, but if you do notput up I will paper this wall with your classic features and ruin thecarpet with what remains. "

The president hesitated a moment. Then he took a roll out of his boot andpaid Jim eighteen dollars. 

"You will not mention this on the street, of course, " said the president. 

"No, " says Jim, "not till I get there. "

When the crowd got back, however, the president had fled and he hasremained fled ever since. The longer he remained away and thought it over, the more he became attached to Canada, and the more of a confirmed andincurable fugitive he became. 

I saw Black Jim last evening and he said he had passed through two bankfailures, but had always realized on his certificates of deposit. Onecashier told Jim that he was the homeliest man that ever looked throughthe window of a busted bank. He said Kelley looked like a man who ate bankcashiers on toast and directors raw with a slice of lemon on top. 

Dr. Dizart's Dog. 

A man whose mother-in-law had been successfully treated by the doctor, oneday presented him with a beautiful Italian hound named Nemesis. 

When I say that the able physician had treated the mother-in-lawsuccessfully, I mean successfully from her son-in-law's standpoint, andnot from her own, for the doctor insisted on treating her for small-poxwhen she had nothing but an attack of agnostics. She is now sitting on thefront stoop of the golden whence. 

So, after the last sad rites, the broken-hearted son-in-law presented thephysician with a handsome hound with long, slender legs and a wire tail, as a token of esteem and regard. 

The dog was young and playful, as all young dogs are, so he did manylittle tricks which amused almost everyone. 

One day, while the doctor was away administering a subcutaneous injectionof morphine to a hay-fever patient, he left Nemesis in the office alonewith a piece of rag-carpet and his surging thoughts. 

At first Nemesis closed his eyes and breathed hard, then he arose and atepart of an ottoman, then he got up and scratched the paper off the officewall and whined in a sad tone of voice. 

A young Italian hound has a peculiarly sad and depressing song. 

Then Nemesis got up on the desk and poured the ink and mucilage into oneof the drawers on some bandages and condition-powders that the doctor usedin his horse-practice. 

Nemesis then looked out of the window and wailed. He filled the room withrobust wail and unavailing regret. 

After that he tried to dispel his _ennui_ with one of the doctor's oldfelt hats that hung on a chair; but the hair oil with which it wassaturated changed his mind. 

The doctor had magenta hair, and to tone it down so that it would notraise the rate of fire insurance on his office, he used to execute somestudies on it in oil--bear's oil. 

This gave his hair a rich mahogany shade, and his hat smelled and lookedlike an oil refinery. 

That is the reason Nemesis spared the hat, and ate a couple ofporousplasters that his master was going to use on a case of croup. 

At that time the doctor came in, and the dog ran to him with a glad cry ofpleasure, rubbing his cold nose against his master's hand. The ableveterinarian spoke roughly to Nemesis, and throwing a cigar-stub at him, broke two of the animal's delicate legs. 

[Illustration: BUSTLE AND CONFUSION. ]

After that there was a low discordant murmur and the angry hum of medicalworks, lung-testers, glass jars containing tumors and other bric-a-brac, paper-weights and Italian grayhound bisecting the orbit of a redheadedhorse-physician with dude shoes. 

When the police came in, it was found that Nemesis had jumped through aglass door and escaped on two legs and his ear. 

Out through the autumnal haze, across the intervening plateau, over thelow foot-hills, and up the Medicine Bow Range, on and ever onward sped thetimid, grieved and broken-hearted pup, accumulating with wonderfuleagerness the intervening distance between himself and the cruel promoterof the fly-blister and lingering death. 

How often do we thoughtlessly grieve the hearts of those who love us, anddrive forth into the pitiless world those who would gladly lick our handswith their warm loving tongues, or warm their cold noses in the meshes ofour necks. 

How prone we are to forget the devotion of a dumb brute that thoughtlesslyeats our lace lambrequins, and ere we have stopped to consider our madcourse, we have driven the loving heart and the warm wet tongue and thecold little black nose out of our home-life, perhaps into the cold, coldgrave or the bleak and relentless pound. 

Chinese Justice. 

They do things differently in China. Here in America, when a man burglesyour residence, you go and confide in a detective, who keeps your secretand gets another detective to help him. Generally that is the last of it. In China, not long ago, the house of a missionary was entered andvaluables taken by the thieves. The missionary went to the authoritieswith his tale and told them whom he suspected. That's the last he heard ofthat for three weeks. Then he received a covered champagne basket from theDepartment of Justice. On opening it he found the heads of the suspectedburglars packed in tinfoil and in a good state of preservation. Theseheads were not sent necessarily for publication, but as an evidence ofgood faith on the part of the Department of Unimpeded Justice. Mind you, there was no postponement of the preliminary examination, no dilatorymotions and changes of venue, no pleas to the jurisdiction of the court, no legal delays and final challenges of jurors until an idiotic jury hadbeen procured who hadn't read the papers, no ruling out of damagingtestimony, and finally filing of bill of exceptions, no appeal and delay, or appeal afterward to another court which returned the defendant to thecourt of original jurisdiction for review, and years of waiting for theprosecuting witnesses to die of old age and thus release the defendant. There is nothing of that kind in China. You just hand in your orders tothe judicial end of the administration, and then you retire. Later on, thedelivery man brings in your package of heads, makes a salaam, and goesaway. 

Now, this is swift and speedy justice for you. I don't know how the guiltof the defendants is arrived at, but there's nothing tedious about it. Atleast, there's nothing tedious to the complainant I presume they make itred-hot for the criminal. 

Still this style of justice has its drawbacks. For instance, you are atdinner. You have a large and select company dining with you. You are aboutto carve the roast There is a ring at the door. The servant announces thata judicial officer is at the drawbridge and desires to speak with you. Youpull your napkin out of your bosom, lay the carving knife down on thevirgin table cloth, and go to the door. There the minister of justicepresents you with a champagne basket and retires. You return to the dininghall, leaving your basket on the sideboard. After a while you announce toyour guests that you have just received a basket of Mumm's extra dry withthe compliments of the government, and that you will, with the permissionof those present, open a bottle. You arm yourself with a corkscrew, openthe basket, and thoughtlessly tip it over, when two or three human heads, with a pained and grieved expression on the face, roll out on the table. 

When you are looking for a quart bottle of sparkling wine and find insteadthe cold, sad features and reproachful stare of the extremely deceased and_hic jacet_ Chinaman, you naturally betray your chagrin. I like to seejustice moderately swift, and, in fact I've seen it pretty forthwith inits movements two or three times; but I cannot say that I would beprepared for this style. 

Perhaps I'm getting a little nervous in my old age, and a small matterjars my equilibrium; but I'm sure a basket of heads handed in as I wasseated at the table would startle me a little at first, and I might forgetmyself. 

A friend of mine, under such circumstances, made what the English wouldcall "a doosed clevah" remark once in Shanghai. When he opened the baskethe was horrified, but he was cool. He was old sang froid fromSangfroidville. He first took the basket and started for the back room, with the remark: "My friends, I guess you will have to ex-queuese me. "Then he pulled down his eyelids and laughed a hoarse English laugh. 

Answers to Correspondents. 

Caller--Your calling cards should be modest as to size and neatlyengraved, with an extra flourish. 

In calling, there are two important things to be considered: First, whento call, and, second, when to rise and hang on the door handle. 

Some make one-third of the call before rising, and then complete the callwhile airing the house and holding the door open, while others considerthis low and vulgar, making at least one-fourth of the call in the hall, and one-half between the front door and the gate. Different authoritiesdiffer as to the proper time for calling. Some think you should not callbefore 3 or after 5 P. M. , but if you have had any experience and hadordinary sense to start with, you will know when to call as soon as youlook at your hand. 

[Illustration]

Amateur Prize Fighter. --The boxing glove is a large upholstered buckskinmitten, with an abnormal thumb and a string by which it is attached to thewrist, so that when you feed it to an adversary he cannot swallow it andchoke himself. There are two kinds of gloves, viz. , hard gloves and softgloves. 

I once fought with soft gloves to a finish with a young man who was far myinferior intellectually, but he exceeded me in brute force and knowledgeof the use of the gloves. He was not so tall, but he was wider thanmyself. Longitudinally he was my inferior, but latitudinally heoutstripped me. We did not fight a regular prize-fight. It was just donefor pleasure. But I do not think we should abandon ourselves entirely topleasure. It is enervating, and makes one eye swell up and turn blue. 

I still think that a young man ought to have a knowledge of the manly artof self-defense, and if I could acquire such a knowledge without gettinginto a fight about it I would surely learn how to defend myself. 

The boxing glove is worn on the hand of one party, and on the gory nose ofthe other party as the game progresses. Soft gloves very rarely killanyone, unless they work down into the bronchial tubes and shut off therespiration. 

[Illustration: "HE EXCEEDED ME IN BRUTE FORCE. "]

Lecturer, New York City. --You need not worry so much about your costumeuntil you have written your lecture, and it would be a good idea to testthe public a little, if possible, before you do much expensive printing. Your idea seems to be that a man should get a fine lithograph of himselfand a $100 suit of clothes, and then write his lecture to fit thelithograph and the clothes. That is erroneous. 

You say that you have written a part of your lecture, but do not feelsatisfied with it. In this you will no doubt find many people will agreewith you. 

You could wear a full dress suit of black with propriety, or a PrinceAlbert coat, with your hand thrust into the bosom of it. I once lecturedon the subject of phrenology in the southern portion of Utah, being atthat time temporarily busted, but still hoping to tide over the dull timesby delivering a lecture on the subject of "Brains, and how to detect theirpresence. " I was not supplied with a phrenological bust at that time, andas such a thing is almost indispensable, I borrowed a young man fromProvost and induced him to act as bust for the evening. He did so withthrilling effect, taking the entire gross receipts of the lecture coursefrom my coat pocket while I was illustrating the effect of alcoholicstimulants on the raw brain of an adult in a state of health. 

[Illustration: MAKING REPAIRS. ]

You can remove spots of egg from your full dress suit with ammonia andwater, applied by means of a common nail brush. You do not ask for thisrecipe, but, judging from your style, I hope that it may be of use to you. 

Martin F. Tupper, Texas. --The poem to which you allude was written byJulia A. Moore, better known as the Sweet Singer of Michigan. The laststanza was something like this:

 "My childhood days are past and gone, And it fills my heart with pain, To think that youth will nevermore Return to me again. And now, kind friends, what I have wrote, I hope you will pass o'er And not criticise as some has hitherto here-- before done. "

Miss Moore also wrote a volume of poems which the farmers of Michigan arestill using on their potato bugs. She wrote a large number of poems, allmore or less saturated with grief and damaged syntax. She is now said tobe a fugitive from justice. We should learn from this that we cannot evadethe responsibility of our acts, and those who write obituary poetry willone day be overtaken by a bob-tail sleuth hound or a Siberian nemesis withtwo rows of teeth. 

Alonzo G. , Smithville. --Yes, you can learn three card monte without amaster. It is very easy. The book will cost you twenty-five cents and thenyou can practice on various people. The book is a very small item, youwill find, after you have been practicing awhile. Three card monte andjustifiable homicide go hand in hand. 2. You can turn a jack from thebottom of the pack in the old sledge, if you live in some States, but westof the Missouri the air is so light that men who have tried it havefrequently waked up on the shore of eternity with a half turned jack intheir hand, and a hole in the cerebellum the size of an English walnut. 

You can get "Poker and Three Card Monte without a Master" for sixty cents, with a coroner's verdict thrown in. If you contemplate a career as a monteman, you should wear a pair of low, loose shoes that you can kick offeasily, unless you want to die with your boots on. 

Henry Ubet, Montana. --No, you are mistaken in your assumption thatSocrates was the author of the maxim to which you allude. It is of moremodern origin, and, in fact, the sentence of which you speak, viz: "What acombination of conflicting and paradoxical assertions is life? Of what useare logic and argument when we find the true inwardness of the bolognasausage on the outside?" were written by a philosopher who is stillliving. I am willing to give Socrates credit for what he has said anddone, but when I think of a sentiment that is worthy to be graven on amonolith and passed on down to prosperity, I do not want to have itattributed to such men as Socrates. 

Leonora Vivian Gobb, Oleson's Forks, Ariz. --Yes. You can turn the frontbreadths, let out the tucks in the side plaiting and baste on a new dagoonwhere you caught the oyster stew in your lap at the party. You could alsoget trusted for a new dress, perhaps. But that is a matter of taste. Somedealers are wearing their open accounts long this winter and some are not. Do as you think best about cleaning the dress. Benzine will sometimeseradicate an oyster stew from dress goods. It will also eradicate everyonein the room at the same time. I have known a pair of rejuvenated kidgloves to break up a funeral that started out with every prospect ofsuccess. Benzine is an economical thing to use, but socially it is not upto the standard. Another idea has occurred to me, however. Why not riprapthe skirt, calk the solvages, readjust the box plaits, cat stitch thecrown sheet, file down the gores, sandpaper the gaiters and discharge thedolman. You could then wear the garment anywhere in the evening, and halfthe people wouldn't know anything had happened to it. 

James, Owatonna, Minn. --You can easily teach yourself to play on the tuba. You know what Shakespeare says: "Tuba or not tuba? That's the question. "

How true this is? It touches every heart. It is as good a soliliquy as Iever read. P. S. --Please do not swallow the tuba while practicing andchoke yourself to death. It would be a shame for you to swallow a nice newtuba and cast a gloom over it so that no one else would ever want to playon it again. 

Florence. --You can stimulate your hair by using castor oil three ounces, brandy one ounce. Put the oil on the sewing machine, and absorb the brandybetween meals. The brandy will no doubt fly right to your head and eithergreatly assist your hair or it will reconcile you to your lot. The greatattraction about brandy as a hair tonic is, that it should not build upthe thing. If you wish, you may drink the brandy and then breathe hard onthe scalp. This will be difficult at first but after awhile it will notseem irksome. 

Great Sacrifice of Bric-a-brac. 

Parties desiring to buy a job-lot of garden tools, will do well to calland examine my stock. These implements have been but slightly used, andare comparatively as good as new. The lot consists in part of thefollowing:

One three-cornered hoe, Gothic in its architecture and in good runningorder. It is the same one I erroneously hoed up the carnation with, andmay be found, I think, behind the barn, where I threw it when I discoveredmy error. Original cost of hoe, six bits. Will be closed out now at twobits to make room for new goods. 

Also one garden rake, almost as good as new. One front tooth needsfilling, and then it will be as good as ever. I sell this weapon, not somuch to get rid of it, but because I do not want it any more. I shall notgarden any next spring. I do not need to. I began it to benefit my health, and my health is now so healthy that I shall not require the open-airexercise incident to gardening any more. In fact, I am too robust, ifanything. I will, therefore, acting upon the advice of my royal physician, close this rake out, since the failure of the Northwestern Car Company, at50 cents on the dollar. 

Also one lawn-mower, only used once. At that time I cut down what grass Ihad on my lawn, and three varieties of high-priced rose bushes. It is oneof the most hardy open-air lawn-mowers now made. It will outlive any otherlawn-mower, and be firm and unmoved when all the shrubbery has gone todecay. You can also mow your peony bed with it, if you desire. I tried it. This is also an easy running lawn-mower, I would recommend it to any manwho would like to soak his lawn with perspiration. I mowed my lawn, andthen pushed a street-car around in the afternoon to relax my over-strainedmuscles. I will sacrifice this lawn-mower at three-quarters of itsoriginal cost, owing to depression in the stock of the New Jerusalem goldmine, of which I am a large owner and cashier-at-large. 

Will also sell a bright new spade, only used two hours spading forangle-worms. This is a good, early-blooming and very hardy angle-wormspade, built in the Doric style of architecture. Persons desiring a spadeflush, and lacking one spade to "fill, " will do well to give me a call. Notrouble to show the goods. 

I will also part with a small chest of carpenter's tools, only slightlyused. I had intended to do a good deal of amateur carpenter work thissummer, but, as the presidential convention occurs in June, and I shallhave to attend to that, and as I have already sawed up a Queen Anne chair, and thoughtlessly sawed into my leg, I shall probably sacrifice the tools. These tools are all well made, and I do not sell them to make money onthem, but because I have no use for them. I feel as though these toolswould be safer in the hands of a carpenter. I'm no carpenter. My wifeadmitted that when I sawed a board across the piano-stool and sawed thewhat-do-you-call-it all out of the cushion. 

[Illustration: OPEN-AIR EXERCISE. ]

Anyone desiring to monkey with the carpenter's trade, will do well toconsult my catalogue and price-list. I will throw in a white hollycorner-bracket, put together with fence nails, and a rustic settee thatlooks like the Cincinnati riot. Young men who do not know much, andinvalids whose minds have become affected, are cordially invited to calland examine goods. For a cash trade I will also throw in arnica, court-plaster and salve enough to run the tools two weeks, if ordinarycare be taken. 

If properly approached, I might also be wheedled into sacrificing aneasy-running domestic wheelbarrow. I have domesticated it myself andtaught it a great many tricks. 

A Convention. 

The officers and members of the Home for Disabled Butter and Hoary-headedHotel Hash met at their mosque last Saturday evening, and, after the rollcall, reading of the moments of the preceding meeting by the Secretary, singing of the ode and examination of all present to ascertain if theywere in possession of the quarterly password, explanation and signs ofdistress, the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi, having reached the order ofcommunications and new business and good of the order, stated that thesociety was now ready to take action, or, at least, to discuss thefeasibility of holding a series of entertainments at the rink. Theseentertainments had been proposed as a means of propping up the totteringfinances of the society, and procuring much-needed funds for the purposeof purchasing new regalia for the Most Esteemed Duke of the Dishrag andthe Most Esteemed Hired Man, each of whom had been wearing the same redcalico collar and cheese-cloth sash since the organization of the society. Funds were also necessary to pay for a brother who had walked through arailroad trestle into the shoreless sea of eternity, and whose widow had apolicy of $135. 25 against this society on the life of her husband. 

Various suggestions were made; among them was the idea advanced by theMost Highly Esteemed Inside Door-Slammer that, as the society's objectwas, of course, to obtain funds, would it not be well to consider, in thefirst place, whether it would not be as well for the Most EsteemedToolymuckahi to appoint six brethren in good standing to arm themselveswith great care, gird up their loins and muzzle the pay-car as it startedout on its mission. He simply offered this as a suggestion, and, as it wasa direct method of securing the coin necessary, he would move that such acommittee be appointed by the Chair to wait on the pay-car and draw on itat sight. 

The Most Esteemed Keeper of the Cork-screw seconded the motion, in order, as he said, to get it before the house. This brought forward very hotdiscussion, pending which the presiding officer could see very plainlythat the motion was unpopular. 

A visiting brother from Yellowstone Park Creamery No. 17, stated that intheir society "an entertainment of this kind had been given for thepurpose of pouring a flood of wealth into the coffers of the society, andit had been fairly successful. Among the attractions there had beennothing of an immoral or lawless nature whatever. In the first place, akind of farewell oyster gorge had been given, with cove oysters as abasis, and $2 a couple as an after-thought. A can of cove oystersentertained thirty people and made $30 for the society. Besides, it wasfound after the party had broken up that, owing to the adhesive propertiesof the oysters, they were not eaten; but the juice, as it were, had beenscooped up and the puckered and corrugated gizzards of the sea had beenpreserved. Acting upon this suggestion, the society had an oyster pattydebauch the following evening at $2 a couple. Forty suckers came and puttheir means into the common fund. We didn't have enough oysters to quitego around, so some of us cut a dozen out of an old boot leg, and theentertainment was a great success. We also had other little devices formaking money, which worked admirably and yielded much profit to thesociety. Those present also said that they had never enjoyed themselves somuch before. Many little games were played, which produced great merrimentand considerable coin. I could name a dozen devices for your society, ifdesired, by which money could be made for your treasury, without the riskor odium necessarily resulting from robbing the pay-car or a bank, and yetthe profit will be nearly as great in proportion to the work done. "

Here the gavel of the Most Esteemed Toolymuckahi fell with a sickeningthud, and the visiting brother was told that the time assigned tocommunications, new business and good of the order had expired, but thatthe discussion would be taken up at the next session, in one week, atwhich time it was the purpose of the chair to hear and note allsuggestions relative to an entertainment to be given at a future date bythe society for the purpose of obtaining the evanescent scad and for thesuccessful flash of the reluctant boodle. 

Come Back. 

Personal. --Will the young woman who used to cook in our family, and whowent away ten pounds of sugar and five and a half pounds of tea ahead ofthe game, please come back, and all will be forgiven. 

If she cannot return, will she please write, stating her present address, and also give her reasons for shutting up the cat in the refrigerator whenshe went away?

If she will only return, we will try to forget the past, and think only ofthe glorious present and the bright, bright future. 

Come back, Sarah, and jerk the waffle-iron for us once more. 

Your manners are peculiar, but we yearn for your doughnuts, and your styleof streaked cake suits us exactly. 

You may keep the handkerchiefs and the collars, and we will not refer tothe dead past. 

We have arranged it so that when you snore it will not disturb the nightpolice, and if you do not like our children we will send them away. 

We realize that you do not like children very well, and our childrenespecially gave you much pain, because they were not so refined as youwere. 

We have often wished, for your sake, that we had never had any children;but so long as they are in our family, the neighbors will rather expect usto take care of them. 

Still, if you insist upon it, we will send them away. We don't want toseem overbearing with our servants. 

We would be willing, also, to give you more time for mental relaxationthan you had before. The intellectual strain incident to the life of onewho makes gravy for a lost and undone world must be very great, and tirednature must at last succumb. We do not want you to succumb. If anyone hasgot to succumb, let us do it. 

All we ask is that you will let us know when you are going away, and leavethe crackers and cheese where we can find them. 

It was rather rough on us to have you go away when we had guests in thehouse, but if you had not taken the key to the cooking department we couldhave worried along. 

You ought to let us have company at the house sometimes if we will let youhave company when you want to. Still, you know best, perhaps. You areolder than we are, and you have seen more of the world. 

We miss your gentle admonitions and your stern reproofs sadly. Come backand reprove us again. Come back and admonish us once more, at so much peradmonish and groceries. 

[Illustration: "WE HOPE YOU WILL DO THE SAME BY US. "]

We will agree to let you select the tender part of the steak, and suchfruit as seems to strike you favorably, just as we did before. We did notlike it when you were here, but that is because we were young and did notknow what the custom was. 

If a life-time devoted to your welfare can obliterate the injustice wehave done you, we will be glad to yield it to you. 

If you could suggest a good place for us to send the children, where theywould be well taken care of, and where they would not interfere with someother cook who is a friend of yours, we would be glad to have you writeus. 

My wife says she hopes you will feel perfectly free to use the pianowhenever you are lonely or sad, and when you or the bread feel depressedyou will be welcome to come into the parlor and lean up against either oneof us and sob. 

We all know that when you were with us before we were a little reserved inour manner toward you, but if you come back it will be different. 

We will introduce you to more of our friends this time, and we hope youwill do the same by us. Young people are apt to get above their business, and we admit that we were wrong. 

Come back and oversee our fritter bureau once more. 

Take the portfolio of our interior department. 

Try to forget our former coldness. 

Return, oh, wanderer, return!

A New Play. 

The following letter was written, recently, in reply to a dramatist whoproposed the matter of writing a play jointly. 

Hudson, Wis. , Nov. 13, 1886. 

Scott Marble, Esq. --Dear Sir: I have just received your favor ofyesterday, in which you ask me to unite with you in the construction of anew play. 

This idea has been suggested to me before, but not in such a way as toinaugurate the serious thought which your letter has stirred up in myseething mass of mind. 

I would like very much to unite with you in the erection of such adramatic structure that people would cheerfully come to this country fromEurope, and board with us for months in order to see this play everynight. 

You will surely agree with me that someone ought to write a play. Why ithas not been done long ago, I cannot understand. A well known comediantold me a year ago that he hadn't been able to look into a paper forsixteen months. He could not even read over the proof of his own pressnotices and criticisms, to ascertain whether the printer had set them upas he wrote them or not, simply because it took all his spare time off thestage to examine the manuscripts of plays that had been submitted to him. 

But I think we could arrange it so that we might together constructsomething in that line which would at least attract the attention of ourfamilies. 

Would you mind telling me, for instance, how you write a play? You havebeen in the business before, and you could tell me, of course, some of thesalient points about it. Do you write it with a typewriter, or do youdictate your thoughts to someone who does not resent being dictated to?

Do you write a play and then dramatize it, or do you write the drama andthen play on it? Would it not be a very good idea to secure a plot thatwould cost very little, and then put the kibosh on it, or would you put upthe lines first, and then hang the plot or drama, or whatever it is, onthe lines? Is it absolutely necessary to have a prologue? If so, what is aprologue? Is it like a catalogue?

I have a great many crude ideas, but you see I am not practical. One of mycrude ideas is to introduce into the play an artist's studio. This wouldnot cost much, for we could borrow the studio evenings and allow theartist to use it daytimes. Then we would introduce into the studio scenethe artist's living model. Everybody would be horrified, but they wouldgo. They would walk over each other to attend the drama, and we would dowell. Our living model in the studio act would be made of common wax, andif it worked well, we would discharge other members of the company andsubstitute wax. Gradually we could get it down to where the company wouldbe wax, with the exception of a janitor with a feather duster. Think thatover. 

But seriously, a play, it seems to me, should embody an idea. Am I correctin that theory or not? It ought to convey some great thought, some maximor aphorism, or some such a thing as that. How would it do to arrange aplay with the idea of impressing upon the audience that "the fool and hismoney are soon parted?" Are you using a hero and a heroine in your playsnow? If so, would you mind writing their lines for them, while I arrangethe details and remarks for the young man who is discovered asleep on adivan when the curtain rises, and who sleeps on through the play with hismouth slightly ajar till the close--the close of the play, not the closeof his mouth--when it is discovered that he is dead. He then plays thecold remains in the closing tableau, and fills a new-made grave at $9 perweek. 

I could also write the lines, I think, for the young man who comes inwearing a light summer cane and a seersucker coat so tight that you cancount his vertebrae. I could write what he would say without great mentalstrain, I think. I must avoid mental strain or my intellect might splitdown the back and I would be a mental wreck, good for nothing but to strewthe shores of time with myself. 

Various other crude ideas present themselves to my mind, but they need tobe clothed. You will say that this is unnecessary. I know you will at oncereply that, for the stage, the less you clothe an idea the more popular itwill be, but I could not consent to have even a bare thought of mine makean appearance night after night before a cultivated audience. 

What do you think of introducing a genuine case of small-pox on the stage?You say in your letter that what the American people clamor for issomething "catchy. " That would be catchy, and it would also introduceitself. 

I wish you would also tell me what kind of diet you confine yourself towhile writing a play, and how you go to work to procure it. Do you live ona mixed diet, or on your relatives? Would you soak your head while writinga play, or would you soak your overcoat? I desire to know all thesethings, because, Mr. Marble, to tell you the truth, I am as ignorant aboutthis matter as the babe unborn. In fact, posterity would have to get upearly in the morning to know less about play-writing than I have succeededin knowing. 

If we are to make a kind of comedy, my idea would be to introducesomething facetious in the middle of the comedy. No one will expect it, you see, and it will tickle the audience almost to death. 

A friend of mine suggests that it would be a great hit to introduce, orrather to reproduce, the Hell Gate explosion. Many were not able to bethere at the time, and would willingly go a long distance to witness thereproduction. 

I wish that you would reply to this letter at an early date, telling mewhat you think of the schemes suggested. Feel perfectly free to expressyourself fully. I am not too proud to receive your suggestions. 

The Silver Dollar. 

It would seem at this time, while so little is being said on the currencyquestion, and especially by the men who really control the currency, thata word from me would not be out of place. Too much talking has been doneby those only who have a theoretical knowledge of money and its eccentrichabits. People with a mere smattering of knowledge regarding nationalcurrency have been loquacious, while those who have made the matter astudy, have been kept in the background. 

At this period in the history of our country, there seems to be a generalstringency, and many are in the stringency business who were never thatway before. Everything seems to be demonetized. The demonetization ofgroceries is doing as much toward the general wiggly palsy of trade asanything I know of. 

But I may say, in alluding briefly to the silver dollar, that there areworse calamities than the silver dollar. Other things may occur in ourlives, which, in the way of sadness and three-cornered gloom, make thelarge, robust dollar look like an old-fashioned half-dime. 

I met a man the other day, who, two years ago, was running a small paperat Larrabie's Slough. He was then in his meridian as a journalist, and hispaper was frequently quoted by such widely-read publications as the_Knight of Labor at Work_, a humorous semi-monthly journal. He boldlyassailed the silver dollar, and with his trenchant pen he wrote suchburning words of denunciation that the printer had to set them on icebefore he could use the copy. 

Last week I met him on a Milwaukee & St. Paul train. He was very thin inflesh, and the fire of defiance was no longer in his eye. I asked him howhe came on with the paper at Larrabie's Slough. He said it was no more. 

"It started out, " said he, "in a fearless way, but it was not sustained. "

He then paused in a low tone of voice, gulped, and proceeded:

"Folks told me when I began that I ought to attack almost everything. Makethe paper non-partisan, but aggressive, that was their idea. Sail intoeverything, and the paper would soon be a power in the land. So Iaggressed. 

"Friends came in very kindly and told me what to attack. They wouldneglect their own business in order to tell me of corruption in somebodyelse. I went on that way for some time in a defiant mood, attackinganything that happened to suggest itself. 

"Finally I thought I would attack the silver dollar. I did so. I thoughtthat friends would come to me and praise me for my manly words, and that Icould afford to lose the friendship of the dollar provided I could winfriends. 

"In six months I took an unexpired annual pass over our Larrabie SloughNarrow-Gauge, or Orphan Road, and with nothing else but the clothes Iwore, I told the plaintiff how to jerk the old Washington press and wentaway. The dear old Washington press that had more than once squatted myburning words into the pure white page. The dear old towel on which I hadwiped my soiled hands for years, until it had almost become a part ofmyself, the dark blue Gordon press with its large fly wheel andintermittent chattel mortgage, a press, to which I had contributed thefirst joint of my front finger; the editor's chair; the samples of largebusiness cards printed in green with an inflamed red border, which showedthat we could do colored work at Larrabie's Slough just as well as theycould in the large cities; the files of our paper; the large wilted potatothat Mr. Alonzo G. Pinkham of Erin Corners kindly laid on our table-all, all had to go. 

"I fled out into the great, hollow, mocking world of people who hadrequested me to aggress. They were people who had called my attention tovarious things which I ought to attack. I had attacked those things. I hadalso attacked the Larrabie Slough Narrow-Gauge Railroad, but the managerdid not see the attack, and so my pass was good. 

"What could I do?

"I had attacked everything, and more especially the silver dollar, and nowI was homeless. For fourteen weeks I rode up the narrow-gauge road one dayand back the next, subsisting solely on the sample of nice pecan meat thatthe newsboy puts in each passenger's lap. 

"You look incredulous, I see, but it is true. 

"I feel differently toward the currency now, and I wish I could undo whatI have done. Were I called up again to jerk the Archimedean lever, I wouldnot be so aggressive, especially as regards the currency. Whether it isinflated or not, silver dollars, paper certificates of deposit or silverbullion, it does not matter to me. 

"I yearn for two or three adult doughnuts and one of those thick, dappledslabs of gingerbread, or slat of pie with gooseberries in it. I presumethat I could write a scathing editorial on the abuses of our currency yet, but I am not so much in the scathe business as I used to be. 

"I wish you would state, if you will, through some great metropolitanjournal, that my views in relation to the silver coinage and the currencyquestion have undergone a radical change, and that any plan whatever, bywhich to make the American dollar less skittish, will meet with my heartyapproval. 

"If I have done anything at all through my paper to injure or repress theflow of our currency, and I fear I have, I now take this occasion tocheerfully regret it. "

He then wrung my hand and passed from my sight. 

Polygamy as a Religious Duty. 

During the past few years in the history of our republic, we have hadleprosy, yellow fever and the dude, and it seemed as though each one wouldwreck the whole national fabric at one time. National and internationaltroubles of one kind and another have gradually risen, been met andmastered, but the great national abscess known as the Church of JesusChrist of Latter Day Saints still obstinately refuses to come to a head. 

I may be a radical monogamist and a rash enthusiast upon this matter, butI still adhere to my original motto, one country, one flag and one wife ata time. Matrimony is a good thing, but it can be overdone. We can excusethe man who becomes a collection of rare coins, stamps, or autographs, buthe who wears out his young life making a collection of wives, should belooked upon with suspicion. 

After all, however, this matter has always been, and still is, treatedwith too much levity. It seems funny to us, at a distance of 1, 600 miles, that a thick-necked patriarch in the valley of the Jordan should be sealedto thirteen or fourteen low-browed, half human females, and that the wholemass of humanity should live and multiply under one roof. 

Those who see the wealthy polygamists of Salt Lake City, do not know muchof the horrors of trying to make polygamy and poverty harmonize in therural districts. In the former case, each wife has a separate residence orsuite of rooms, perhaps; but in the latter is the aggregation of vice anddepravity, doubly horrible because, instead of the secluded characterwhich wickedness generally assumes, here it is the common heritage of theyoung and at once fails to shock or horrify. 

Under the All-seeing eye, and the Bee Hive, and the motto, "Holiness tothe Lord, " with a bogus Bible and a red-nosed prophet, who couldn't earn$13. Per month pounding sand, this so called church hanging on to thehorns of the altar, as it were, defies the statutes, and while in openrebellion against the laws of God and man, refers to the constitution ofthe United States as protecting it in its "religious belief. "

In a poem, the patient Mormon in the picturesque valley of the Great SaltLake, where he has "made the desert blossom as the rose, " looks well. Withthe wonderful music of the great organ at the tabernacle sounding in yourears, and the lofty temple near by towering to the sky, you say toyourself, there is, after all, something solemn and impressive in allthis; but when a greasy apostle in an alapaca duster, takes his placebehind the elevated desk, and with bad grammar and slangy sentences, asksGod in a businesslike way to bless this buzzing mass of unclean, low-browed, barbarous scum of all foreign countries, and the white trashand criminals of our own, you find no reverence, and no religious awe. 

The same mercenary, heartless lunacy that runs through the sicklyplagiarism of the Book of Mormon, pervades all this, and instead of theodor of sanctity you notice the flavor of bilge water, and the emigrant'sown hailing sign, the all-pervading fragrance of the steerage. 

Education is the foe of polygamy, and many of the young who have had themeans by which to complete their education in the East, are apostate, atleast so far as polygamy is concerned. Still, to the great mass of thepoor and illiterate of Mormondom this is no benefit. The rich of theMormon Church are rich because their influence with this great fraud hasmade them so; and it would, as a matter of business, injure theirprospects to come out and bolt the nomination. 

[Illustration: THE FAMILY WASH. ]

Utah, even with the Edmunds bill, is hopelessly Mormon; all adjoiningStates and Territories are already invaded by them, and the delegate inCongress from Wyoming is elected by the Mormon vote. 

I believe that I am moderately liberal and free upon all religiousmatters, but when a man's confession of faith involves from three totwenty-seven old corsets in the back yard every spring, and a clothes lineevery Monday morning that looks like a bridal trousseau emporium struck bya cyclone, I must admit that I am a little bit inclined to be sectarian inmy views. 

It's bad enough to be slapped across the features by one pair of long wethose on your way to the barn, but to have a whole bankrupt stock of cold, wet garments every week fold their damp arms around your neck, as youdodge under the clothes line to drive the cow out of the yard, is wrong. 

It is not good for man to be alone, of course, but why should he yearn tofold a young ladies' seminary to his bosom? Why should this morbidsentiment prompt him to marry a Female Suffrage Mass Meeting? I do notwish to be considered an extremist in religious matters, but the doctrinethat requires me to be sealed to a whole emigrant train, seems unnaturaland inconsistent. 

The Newspaper. 

An Address Delivered Before the Wisconsin State Press Association, atWhite-Water, Wis. , August 11, 1886. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Press of Wisconsin:

I am sure that when you so kindly invited me to address you to-day, youdid not anticipate a lavish display of genius and gestures. I accepted theinvitation because it afforded me an opportunity to meet you and to getacquainted with you, and tell you personally that for years I have been aconstant reader of your valuable paper and I like it. You are running itjust as I like to see a newspaper run. 

I need not elaborate upon the wonderful growth of the press in ourcountry, or refer to the great power which journalism wields in thedevelopment of the new world. I need not ladle out statistics to show youhow the newspaper has encroached upon the field of oratory and how thepale and silent man, while others sleep, compiles the universal history ofa day and tells his mighty audience what he thinks about it before he goesto bed. 

Of course, this is but the opinion of one man, but who has a betteropportunity to judge than he who sits with his finger on the electricpulse of the world, judging the actions of humanity at so much per judge, invariably in advance?

I need not tell you all this, for you certainly know it if you read yourpaper, and I hope you do. A man ought to read his own paper, even if hecannot endorse all its sentiments. 

So necessary has the profession of journalism become to the progress andeducation of our country, that the matter of establishing schools whereyoung men may be fitted for an active newspaper life, has attracted muchattention and discussion. It has been demonstrated that our colleges donot fit a young man to walk at once into the active management of a paper. He should at least know the difference between a vile contemporary and aGothic scoop. 

It is difficult to map out a proper course for the student in a school ofjournalism, there are so many things connected with the profession whichthe editor and his staff should know and know hard. The newspaper ofto-day is a library. It is an encyclopaedia, a poem, a biography, ahistory, a prophecy, a directory, a time-table, a romance, a cook book, aguide, a horoscope, an art critic, a political resume, a _multum inparvo_. It is a sermon, a song, a circus, an obituary, a picnic, ashipwreck, a symphony in solid brevier, a medley of life and death, agrand aggregation of man's glory and his shame. It is, in short, abird's-eye-view of all the magnanimity and meanness, the joys and griefs, the births and deaths, the pride and poverty of the world, and all for twocents--sometimes. 

I could tell you some more things that the newspaper of to-day is, if youhad time to stay here and your business would not suffer in your absence. Among others it is a long felt want, a nine-column paper in a five-columntown, a lying sheet, a feeble effort, a financial problem, a totteringwreck, a political tool and a sheriff's sale. 

If I were to suggest a curriculum for the young man who wished to take aregular course in a school of journalism, preferring that to the actualexperience, I would say to him, devote the first two years to meditationand prayer. This will prepare the young editor for the surprise andconsequent temptation to profanity which in a few years he may experiencewhen he finds that the name of the Deity in his double-leaded editorial isspelled with a little "g, " and the peroration of the article is locked upbetween a death notice and the advertisement of a patent moustache coaxer, which is to follow pure reading matter every day in the week and occupythe top of column on Sunday tf. 

The ensuing five years should be devoted to the peculiar orthography ofthe English language. 

Then put in three years with the dumb bells, sand bags, slung shots andtomahawk. In my own journalistic experience I have found more cause forregret over my neglect of this branch than anything else. I usually keepon my desk during a heated campaign, a large paper weight, weighing threeor four pounds, and in several instances I have found that I could feedthat to a constant reader of my valuable paper instead of a retraction. 

Fewer people lick the editor though, now, than did so in years gone by. Many people--in the last two years--have gone across the street to lickthe editor and never returned. They intended to come right back in a fewmoments, but they are now in a land where a change of heart and a palmleaf fan is all they need. 

Fewer people are robbing the editor now-a-days, too, I notice with muchpleasure. Only a short time ago I noticed that a burglar succeeded inbreaking into the residence of a Dakota journalist, and after a long, hardstruggle the editor succeeded in robbing him. 

After the primary course, mapped out already, an intermediate course often years should be given to learning the typographical art, so that whenvisitors come in and ask the editor all about the office, he can tell themof the mysteries of making a paper, and how delinquent subscribers havefrequently been killed by a well-directed blow with a printer's towel. 

Five years should be devoted to a study of the art of proof-reading. Inthat length of time the young journalist can perfect himself to such adegree that it will take another five years for the printer to understandhis corrections and marginal notes. 

Fifteen years should then be devoted to the study of American politics, especially civil service reform, looking at it from a non-partisanstandpoint. If possible, the last five years should be spent abroad. London is the place to go if you wish to get a clear, concise view ofAmerican politics, and Chicago or Milwaukee would be a good place for theyoung English journalist to go and study the political outlook of England. 

The student should then take a medical and surgical course, so that hemay be able to attend to contusions, fractures and so forth, which mayoccur to himself or to the party who may come to his office for aretraction and by mistake get his spinal column double-leaded. 

Ten years should then be given to the study of law. No thorough, metropolitan editor wants to enter upon the duties of his professionwithout knowing the difference between a writ of _mandamus_ and otherstyles of profanity. He should thoroughly understand the entire system ofAmerican jurisprudence, so that in case a _certiorari_ should break out inhis neighborhood he would know just what to do for it. 

The student will, by this time, begin to see what is required of him andenter with great zeal upon the further study of his profession. 

He will now enter upon a theological course of ten years and fit himselfthoroughly to speak intelligently of the various creeds and religions ofthe world. Ignorance or the part of an editor is almost a crime, and whenhe closes a powerful editorial with the familiar quotation, "It is theearly bird that catches the worm, " and attributes it to St. Paul insteadof Deuteronomy, it makes me blush for the profession. 

The last ten years may be profitably devoted to the acquisition of apractical knowledge of cutting cordwood, baking beans, making shirts, lecturing, turning double handsprings, being shot out of a catapult at acircus, learning how to make a good adhesive paste that will not sour inhot weather, grinding scissors, punctuating, capitalization, condemnation, syntax, plain sewing, music and dancing, sculpting, etiquette, prosody, howto win the affections of the opposite sex and evade a malignant case ofbreach of promise, the ten commandments, every man his own tooter on theflute, croquet, rules of the prize ring, rhetoric, parlor magic, calisthenics, penmanship, how to run a jack from the bottom of the packwithout getting shot, civil engineering, decorative art, kalsomining, bicycling, base ball, hydraulics, botany, poker, international law, high-low-jack, drawing and painting, faro, vocal music, driving, breakingteam, fifteen ball pool, how to remove grease spots from last year'spantaloons, horsemanship, coupling freight cars, riding on a rail, ridingon a pass, feeding threshing machines, how to wean a calf from the parentstem, teaching school, bull-whacking, plastering, waltzing, vaccination, autopsy, how to win the affections of your wife's mother, every man hisown washerwoman, or how to wash underclothes so they will not shrink, etc. , etc. 

But time forbids anything like a thorough list of what a young man shouldstudy in order to fully understand all that he may be called upon toexpress an opinion about in his actual experience as a journalist. Thereare a thousand little matters which every editor should know; such, forinstance, as the construction of roller composition. Many newspaper mencan write a good editorial on Asiatic cholera, but their rollercomposition is not fit to eat. 

With the course of study that I have mapped out, the young student wouldemerge from the college of journalism at the age of 95 or 96, ready totake off his coat and write an article on almost any subject. He would bea little giddy at first, and the office boy would have to see that he wentto bed at a proper time each night, but aside from that, he would be agood man to feed a waste paper basket. 

Actual experience is the best teacher in this peculiarly tryingprofession. I hope some day to attend a press convention where the orderof exercise will consist of five-minute experiences from each one presentIt would be worth listening to. 

My own experience was a little peculiar. It was my intention at first topractice law, when I went to the Rocky Mountains, although I had beenwarned by the authorities not to do so. Still, I did practice in asurreptitious kind of a way, and might have been practicing yet if myclient hadn't died. When you have become attached to a client and respectand like him, and then when, without warning, like a bolt of electricityfrom a clear sky, he suddenly dies and takes the bread right out of yourmouth, it is rough. 

Then I tried the practice of criminal law, but my client got into thepenitentiary, where he was no use to me financially or politically. Finally, when the judge was in a hurry, he would appoint me to defend thepauper criminals. They all went to the penitentiary, until people got tocriticising the judge, and finally they told him that it was a shame toappoint me to defend an innocent man. 

My first experience in journalism was in a Western town, in which I was atotal stranger. I went there with thirty-five cents, but I had itconcealed in the lining of my clothes so that no one would have suspectedit if they had met me. I had no friends, and I noticed that when I got offthe train the band was not there to meet me. I entered the town just asany other American citizen would. I had not fully decided whether tobecome a stage robber or a lecturer on phrenology. At that time I got achance to work on a morning paper. It used to go to press before dark, soI always had my evenings to myself and I liked that part of it first-rate. I worked on that paper a year and might have continued if the proprietorshad not changed it to an evening paper. 

Then a company incorporated itself and started a paper, of which I tookcharge. The paper was published in the loft of a livery stable. That isthe reason they called it a stock company. You could come up the stairsinto the office or you could twist the tail of the iron-gray mule and takethe elevator. 

It wasn't much of a paper, but it cost $16, 000 a year to run it, and itcame out six days in the week, no matter what the weather was. We took theAssociated Press news by telegraph part of the time and part of the timewe relied on the Cheyenne morning papers, which we got of the conductor onthe early morning freight. We got a great many special telegrams fromWashington in that way, and when the freight train got in late, I had toguess at what congress was doing and fix up a column of telegraph the bestI could. There was a rival evening paper there, and sometimes it wouldsend a smart boy down to the train and get hold of our special telegrams, and sometimes the conductor would go away on a picnic and take ourCheyenne paper with him. 

All these things are annoying to a man who is trying to supply a long feltwant. There was one conductor, in particular, who used to go away into thefoot-hills shooting sage hens and take our cablegrams with him. This threwtoo much strain on me. I could guess at what congress was doing and makeup a pretty readable report, but foreign powers and reichstags and crownedheads and dynasties always mixed me up. You can look over what congressdid last year and give a pretty good guess at what it will do this year, but you can't rely on a dynasty or an effete monarchy in a bad state ofpreservation. It may go into executive session or it may go intobankruptcy. 

Still, at one time we used to have considerable local news to fill upwith. The north and middle parks for a while used to help us out when themining camps were new. Those were the days when it was consideredperfectly proper to kill off the board of supervisors if their action wasdistasteful. At that time a new camp generally located a cemetery andwrote an obituary; then the boys would start out to find a man whose namewould rhyme with the rest of the verse. Those were the days when thecemeteries of Colorado were still in their infancy and the song of thesix-shooter was heard in the land. 

Sometimes the Indians would send us in an item. It was generally in theobituary line. With the Sioux on the north and the peaceful Utes on thesouth, we were pretty sure of some kind of news during the summer. Theparks used to be occupied by white men winters and Indians summers. Summerwas really the pleasantest time to go into the parks, but the Indians hadbeen in the habit of going there at that season, and they were so clannishthat the white men couldn't have much fun with them, so they decided theywould not go there in the summer. Several of our best subscribers werekilled by the peaceful Utes. 

There were two daily and three weekly papers published in Laramie City avthat time. There were between two and three thousand people and our localcirculation ran from 150 to 250, counting dead-heads. In our prospectus westated that we would spare no expense whatever in ransacking the universefor fresh news, but there were times when it was all we could do to getour paper out on time. Out of the express office, I mean. 

One of the rival editors used to write his editorials for the paper in theevening, jerk the Washington hand-press to work them off, go home andwrestle with juvenile colic in his family until daylight and then deliverhis papers on the street. It is not surprising that the great mentalstrain incident to this life made an old man of him, and gave a tinge ofextreme sadness to the funny column of his paper. 

In an unguarded moment, this man wrote an editorial once that got all hissubscribers mad at him, and the same afternoon he came around and wantedto sell his paper to us for $10, 000. I told him that the whole outfitwasn't worth ten thousand cents. 

"I know that, " said he, "but it is not the material that I am talkingabout. It is the good will of the paper. "

We had a rising young horsethief in Wyoming in those days, who got intojail by some freak of justice, and it was so odd for a horsethief to getinto jail that I alluded to it editorially. This horsethief haddistinguished himself from the common, vulgar horsethieves of his time, bywearing a large mouth--a kind of full-dress, eight-day mouth. He rarelysmiled, but when he did, he had to hold the top of his head on with bothhands. I remember that I spoke of this in the paper, forgetting that hemight criticise me when he got out of jail. When he did get out again, hestated that he would shoot me on sight, but friends advised me not to havehis blood on my hands, and I took their advice, so I haven't got aparticle of his blood on either of my hands. 

For two or three months I didn't know but he would drop into the officeany minute and criticise me, but one day a friend told me that he had beenhung in Montana. Then I began to mingle in society again, and didn't haveto get in my coal with a double barrel shot gun any more. 

After that I was always conservative in relation to horsethieves until wegot the report of the vigilance committee. 

Wrestling with the Mazy. 

Very soon now I shall be strong enough on my cyclone leg to resume mylessons in waltzing. It is needless to say that I look forward with greatpleasure to that moment. Nature intended that I should glide in the mazy. Tall, lithe, bald-headed, genial, limber in the extreme, suave, soulful, frolicsome at times, yet dignified and reserved toward strangers, light onthe foot--on my own foot, I mean--gentle as a woman at times, yetirresistible as a tornado when insulted by a smaller, I am peculiarlyfitted to shine in society. Those who have observed my polished brow, whenunder a strong electric light, say they never saw a man shine so insociety as I do. 

My wife taught me how to waltz. She would teach me on Saturdays and repairher skirts during the following week. I told her once that I thought I wastoo brainy to dance. She said she hadn't noticed that, but she thought Iseemed to run too much to legs. My wife is not timid about telling meanything that she thinks will be for my good. When I make a mistake she isperfectly frank with me, and comes right to me and tells me about it, sothat I won't do so again. 

I had just learned how to reel around a ballroom to a little waltz music, when I was blown across the State of Mississippi in September last by ahigh wind, and broke one of my legs which I use in waltzing. When thisaccident occurred I had just got where I felt at liberty to choose aglorious being with starry eyes and fluffy hair, and magnificently modeledform, to steer me around the rink to the dreamy music of Strauss. Oneyoung lady, with whom I had waltzed a good deal, when she heard that myleg was broken, began to attend every dancing party she could hear of, although she had declined a great many previous to that. I asked her howshe could be so giddy and so gay when I was suffering. She said she wasdoing it to drown her sorrow, but her little brother told me on the quietthat she was dancing while I was sick because she felt perfectly safe. Afriend of mine says I have a pronounced and distinctly original manner ofwaltzing, and that he never saw anybody, with one exception, who waltzedas I did, and that was Jumbo. He claimed that either one of us would be agood dancer if he could have the whole ring to himself. He said that hewould like to see Jumbo and me waltz together if he were not afraid that Iwould step on Jumbo and hurt him. You can see what a feeling of jealoushatred it arouses in some small minds when a man gets so that he canmingle in good society and enjoy himself. 

[Illustration: WALTZING WITH JUMBO. ]

I could waltz more easily if the rules did not require such a constantchange of position. I am sedentary in my nature, slow to move about, sothat it takes a lady of great strength of purpose to pull me around ontime. 

Anecdotes of the Stage. 

Years ago, before Laramie City got a handsome opera house, everything inthe theatrical and musical line of a high order was put on the stage ofBlackburn's Hall. Other light dramas on the stage, and thrilling murdersin the audience, used to occur at Alexander's Theater, on Front street. Here you could get a glass of Laramie beer, made of glucose, alkali water, plug tobacco, and Paris green, by paying two bits at the bar, and, as aprize, you drew a ticket to the olio, specialties, and low gags of thestage. The idea of inebriating a man at the box office, so that he willendure such a sham, is certainly worthy of serious consideration. I haveseen shows at Alexander's, and also at McDaniel's, in Cheyenne, however, where the bar should have provided an ounce of chloroform with each ticketin order to allay the suffering. 

Here you could sit down in the orchestra and take the chances of gettinghit when the audience began to shoot at the pianist, or you could go upinto the boxes and have a quiet little conversation with the timidbeer-jerkers. The beer-jerker was never too proud to speak to the mosthumble, and if she could sell a grub-staker for $5 a bottle of real PiperHeidsick, made in Cheyenne and warranted to remove the gastric coat, pantsand vest from a man's stomach in two minutes, she felt pleased and proud. 

A room-mate of mine, whose name I will not give, simply because he was andstill is the best fellow in the United States, came home from the"theater" one night with his hair parted in the middle. He didn't wear itthat way generally, so it occasioned talk in social circles. He still hasa natural parting of the hair about five inches long, that he acquiredthat night. He said it was accidental so far as he was concerned, butunless the management could keep people from shooting the holders ofreserved seats between the acts or any other vital spot, he would withdrawhis patronage. And he was right about it. I think that any court in theland would protect a man who had purchased a seat in good faith, and withhis hat on and both feet on the back of the seat in front of him, sitsquietly in said seat, smoking a Colorado Maduro cigar and watching theplay. 

Several such accidents occurred at the said theater. Among them was alittle tableau in which Joe Walker and Centennial Bob took the leadingparts. Bob went to the penitentiary, and Joe went to his reward with oneof his lungs in his coat pocket. There was a little difference betweenthem as to the regularity of a "draw" and "show down, " so Bob went homefrom the theater and loaded a double-barrel shot-gun with a lot ofscrap-iron, and, after he had introduced the collection into Joe's frontbreadth, the latter's system was so lacerated that it wouldn't retainground feed. 

There were other little incidents like that which occurred in and aroundthe old theater, some growing out of the lost love of a beer-jerker, somefrom an injudicious investment in a bob-tail flush that never got ripeenough to pick, and some from the rarified mountain air, united with anepidemic known as _mania rotguti_. 

A funny incident of the stage occurred not long ago to a friend of mine, who is traveling with a play in which a stage cow appears. He is usingwhat is called a profile cow now, which works by machinery. Last winterthis cow ran down while in the middle of the stage, and forgot her lines. The prompter gave the string a jerk in order to assist her. This broke thecow in two, and the fore-quarters walked off to the left into onedressing-room, while the behind-quarters and porter-house steak retired tothe outer dressing-room. The audience called for an _encore_; but the cowfelt as though she had made a kind of a bull of the part, and would notappear. Those who may be tempted to harshly criticise this last remark, are gently reminded that the intense heat of the past month is liable toeffect anyone's mind. Remember, gentle reader, that your own brain maysome day soften also, and then you will remember how harsh you were towardme. 

Prior to the profile cow, the company ran a wicker-work cow, that washollow and admitted of two hired-men, who operated the beast at a moderatesalary. These men drilled a long time on what they called a heiferdance--a beautiful spectacular, and highly moral and instructive quadrupedclog, sirloin shuffle, and cow gallop, to the music of a piano-forte. Therehearsals had been crowned with success, and when the cow came on thestage she got a bouquet, and made a bran mash on one of the ushers. 

She danced up and down the stage, perfectly self-possessed, and with thatperfect grace and abandon which is so noticeable in the self-made cow. Finally she got through, the piano sounded a wild Wagnerian bang, and thecow danseuse ambled off. She was improperly steered, however, and ran herhead against a wing, where she stopped in full view of the audience. Thetalent inside of the cow thought they had reached the dressing-room andran against the wall, so they felt perfectly free to converse with eachother. The cow stood with her nose jammed up against the wing, wrapped inthought, Finally, from her thorax the audience heard a voice say:

"Jim, you blamed galoot, that ain't the step we took at rehearsal nomore'n nuthin'. If you're going to improvise a new cow duet, I wish youwouldn't take the fore-quarters by surprise next time. "

It is not now known what the reply was, for just then the prompter came onthe stage, rudely twisted the tail of the cow, rousing her from herlethargy, and harshly kicking her in the pit of the stomach, he drove heroff the stage, The audience loudly called for a repetition, but the cowrefused to come in. 

George the Third. 

George III was born in England June 4, 1738, and ran for king in 1760. Hewas a son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and held the office of king forsixty years. He was a natural born king and succeeded his grandfather, George II. Look as you will a-down the long page of English history, andyou will not fail to notice the scarcity of self-made kings. How few ofthem were poor boys and had to skin along for years with no money, noinfluential friends and no fun. 

Ah, little does the English king know of hard times and carrying two orthree barrels of water to a tired elephant in order that he may get intothe afternoon performance without money. When he gets tired of beingprince, all he has to do is just to be king all day at good wages, andthen at night take off his high-priced crown, hang it up on the hat-rack, put on a soft hat and take in the town. 

George III quit being prince at the age of 22 years, and began to holddown the English throne. He would reign along for a few years, taking itkind of quiet, and then all at once he would declare war and pick out somepeople to go abroad and leave their skeletons on some foreign shore. Thatwas George's favorite amusement. He got up the Spanish war in two yearsafter he clome the throne; then he had an American revolution, a Frenchrevolution, an Irish rebellion and a Napoleonic war. He dearly lovedcarnage, if it could be prepared on a foreign strand. George always wantedimported carnage, even if it came higher. It was in 1765, and early inGeorge's reign, that the American stamp act passed the Legislature and theGoddess of Liberty began to kick over the dashboard. 

George was different from most English kings, morally. When he spit on hishand and grasped the sceptre, he took his scruples with him right onto thethrone. He was not talked about half so much as other kings before orsince his time. Nine o'clock most always found George in bed, with hissceptre under the window-sash, so that he could get plenty of fresh air. As it got along toward 9 o'clock, he would call the hired girl, tell herto spread a linen lap-robe on the throne till morning, issue a royal ukasedirecting her to turn out the cat, and instructing the cook to set thepancake batter behind the royal stove in the council chamber, then hewould wind the clock and retire. Early in the morning George would be upand dressed, have all his chores done and the throne dusted off ready foranother hard day's reign. 

[Illustration: WRAPPED IN SLUMBER. ]

George III is the party referred to in the Declaration of Independence thepresent king of Great Britain, and of whom many bitter personal remarkswere made by American patriots. On this side of the water George was nothighly esteemed. If he had come over here to spend the summer with friendsin Boston, during the days of the stamp act excitement, he could have gonehome packed in ice, no doubt, and with a Swiss sunset under each eye. 

George's mind was always a little on the bias, and in 1810 he went crazyfor the fifth time. Always before that he had gone right ahead with hisreign, whether he was crazy or not, but with the fifth attack of insanity, coupled with suggestion of the brain and blind staggers, it was decided totie him up in the barn and let someone else reign awhile. The historiansays that blindness succeeded this attack, and in 1811 the Prince of Walesbecame regent. 

George III died at Windsor in 1820, with the consent of a joint committeeof both houses of congress, at the age of 82 years. He made the longestrun as king, without stopping for feed or water, of any monarch in Englishhistory. Sixty years is a long time to be a monarch and look under the bedevery night for a Nihilist loaded with a cut-glass bomb and Paris green. Sixty years is a long while to jerk a sceptre over a nation and keep onthe right side, politically, all the time. 

George was of an inventive turn of mind, and used to be monkeying withsome kind of a patent, evenings, after he had peeled his royal robes. Mostof his patents related to land, however, and some of the most successfulsoil in Massachusetts was patented by George. 

He was always trying some scheme to make a pile of money easy, so that hewouldn't have to work; but he died poor and crazy at last, in England. Hewas not very smart, but he attended to business all the time, and did notget up much of a reputation as a moral leper. He said that as king ofGreat Britain and general superintendent of Cork he did not aim to makemuch noise, but he desired to attract universal attention by being somoral that he would be regarded as eccentric by other crowned heads. 

The Cell Nest. 

To the Members of the Academy of Science, at Wrin Prairie, Wisconsin:

_Gentlemen:_--I beg leave to submit herewith my microscopic report onthe several sealed specimens of proud flesh and other mementoes takenfrom the roof of Mr. Flannery's mouth. As Mr. Flannery is the mayor ofErin Prairie, and therefore has a world-wide reputation, I deemed itsufficiently important to the world at large, and pleasing to Mr. Flannery's family, to publish this report in the medical journals of thecountry, and have it telegraphed to the leading newspapers at theirexpense. Knowing that the world at large is hungry to learn how thelaudable pus of an eminent man appears under the microscope, and what apleasure it must be to his family to read the description after hisdeath, I have just opened a new box of difficult words and herewithtransmit a report which will be an ornament not only to the scrap-bookof Mr. Flannery's immediate family after his death, but a priceless boonto the reading public at large. 

Removing the seals from the jars as soon as I had returned from theexpress office, I poured off the alcohol and recklessly threw it away. A true scientist does not care for expense. 

The first specimen was in a good state of preservation on its arrival. Inever saw a more beautiful or robust proliferation epitherial cell nest inmy life. It must have been secured immediately after the old epitherialhad left the nest, and it was in good order on its arrival. The wholelobule was looking first-rate. You might ride for a week and not runacross a prettier lobule or a more artistic aggregation of cell nestsoutside a penitentiary. 

Only one cell nest had been allowed to dry up on the way, and this lookeda good deal fatigued. In one specimen I noticed a carneous degeneration, but this is really no reflection on Mr. Flannery personally. While he hasbeen ill it is not surprising that he should allow his cell nests tocarneously degenerate. Such a thing might happen to almost any of us. 

One of the scrapings from the sore on the right posterior fauces, I foundon its arrival, had been seriously injured, and therefore not available. Ireturn it herewith. 

From an examination, which has been conducted with great care, I am led tobelieve that the right posterior rafter of Mr. Flannery's mouth isslightly indurated, and it is barely possible that the northeast duplexand parotid gable end of the roof of his mouth may become involved. 

I wish you would ask Mr. Flannery's immediate relatives, if you can do sowithout arousing alarm in the breast of the patient, if there has everbeen a marked predisposition on the part of his ancestors to tuberculargumboil. I do not wish to be understood as giving this diagnosis as finalat all, but from what I have already stated, taken together with otherclinical and pathological data within my reach, and the fact that minute, tabulated gumboil bactinae were found floating through some of the cellnests, I have every reason to fear the worst. I would be glad to receivefrom you for microscopic examination a fragment of Mr. Flannery'smalpighian layer, showing evidences of cell proliferation. I only suggestthis, of course, as practicable in case there should be a malpighian layerwhich Mr. Flannery is not using. Do not ask him to take a malpighian layeroff her cell nest just to please me. 

From one microscopic examination I hardly feel justified in giving adiagnosis, nor care to venture any suggestion as to treatment, but itmight be well to kalsomine the roof of Mr. Flannery's mouth withgum-arabic, white lime and glue in equal parts. 

There has already been some extravatations and a marked multiformity. Ialso noticed an inflamed and angry color to the stroma with trimmings ofthe same. This might only indicate that Mr. Flannery had kept his mouthopen too much during the summer, and sunburned the roof of his mouth, wereit not that I also discovered traces of gumboil microbes of the squamousvariety. This leads me to fear the worst for Mr. Flannery. However, if thegentlemanly, courteous and urbane members of the Academy of Science, ofErin Prairie, to whom I am already largely indebted for past favors, willkindly forward to me, prepaid, another scraping from the mansard roof ofMr. Flannery's mouth next week, I will open another keg of hard words andtrace this gumboil theory to a successful termination, if I have to use upthe whole ceiling of the patient's mouth. 

Yours, with great sincerity, profundity and verbosity, Bill Nye, Microscopist, Lobulist and Microbist. 

Hudson, Wis. , May 3. 

Parental Advice. 

The past fifty years have done much for the newspaper and periodicalreaders of the United States. That period has been fruitful of greatadvancement and a great reduction in price, but these are not all. Fiftyyears and less have classified information so that science and sense areconveniently found, and humor and nonsense have their proper sphere. Allbranches are pretty full of lively and thoroughly competent writers, whotake hold of their own special work even as the thorough, quick-eyedmechanic takes hold of his line of labor and acquits himself in acreditable manner. The various lines of journalism may appear to becrowded, but they are not. There may be too much vagabond journalism, butthe road that is traveled by the legitimate laborer is not crowded. Theclean, Caucasian journalist, as he climbs the hill, is not crowded verymuch. He can make out to elbow his way toward the front, if he tries veryhard. There may be too much James Crow science, and too much editorialvandalism and gush, and too much of the journalism for revenue only. Theremay be too much ringworm humor also, but there is still a demand for thescientific work of the true student. There is still a good market forhonest editorial opinion, reliable news and fearless and funny paragraphwork and character sketches, as the song and dance men would say. 

All this, however, points in one direction. It all has one hoarse voice, and in the tones of the culverin, whatever that is, it says that to theyoung man who is starting out with the intention of filling the tomb of amillionaire, "Learn to do something well. "

Lots of people rather disliked the famous British hangman, and thought hehadn't made a great record for himself, but he performed a duty that hadto be done by someone, and no one ever complained much about Marwood'swork. He warranted every job and told everyone that if they weredissatisfied he would refund their money at the door. No man ever cameback to Marwood and said, "Sir, you broke my neck in an unworkmanlikemanner. "

It is better to be a successful hangman than to be the banished, abusedand heart-broken, cast-off husband of a great actress. Learn to take holdof some business and jerk it bald-headed. Learn to dress yourself first. This will give you self-assurance, so that you can go away from home andnot be dependent on your mother. Teach yourself to be accurate and carefulin all things. It is better to turn the handle of a sausage grinder andmake a style of sausage that is free from hydrophobia, than to be theextremely hence cashier of a stranded bank, fighting horseflies in thesolemn hush of a Canadian forest. 

People have wrong ideas of the respective merits of different avocations. It is better to be the successful driver of a dray than to be theunsuccessful inventor of a still-born motor. I would rather discover howto successfully wean a calf from the parent stem without being boostedover a nine rail fence, than to discover a new star that had never beenused, and the next evening find that it had made an assignment. 

Boys, oh, boys! How I wish I could take each of you by the ear and leadyou away by yourselves, and show you how many ruins strew the road tosuccess, and how life is like a mining boom. We only hear of those whostrike it rich. The hopeful, industrious prospector who failed to find thecontact and finally filled a nameless grave, is soon forgotten when he isgone, but a million tongues tell to forty million listening ears of theman who struck it rich and went to Europe. 

Therefore make haste to advance slowly and surely. I am aware that yourears ache with the abundance wherewith ye are advised, but if ye seek notto brace up while yet it is called to-day, and file away information forfuture reference and cease to look upon the fifteen-ball pool game when itmoveth itself aright, at such time as ye think not ye shall be inpecuniary circumstances and there shall be none to indorse for you--nay, not one. 

Early Day Justice. [2]

[Footnote 2: _From the Chicago Rambler_. ]

Those were troublesome times, indeed. All wool justice in the courts wasimpossible. The vigilance committee, or Salvation Army as it calleditself, didn't make much fuss about it, but we all knew that the bestcitizens belonged to it and were in good standing. 

It was in those days when young Stewart was short-handed for a sheepherder, and had to take up with a sullen, hairy vagrant, called by theother boys "Esau. " Esau hadn't been on the ranch a week before he madetrouble with the proprietor and got the red-hot blessing from Stewart hedeserved. 

Then Esau got madder and sulked away down the valley among the little sagebrush hummocks and white alkali waste land to nurse his wrath. WhenStewart drove into the corral at night, from town, Esau raised up frombehind an old sheep dip tank, and without a word except what may havegrowled around in his black heart, he raised a leveled Spencer and shothis young employer dead. 

That was the tragedy of the week only. Others had occurred before andothers would probably occur again. It was getting too prevalent forcomfort. So, as soon as a quick cayuse and a boy could get down intotown, the news spread and the authorities began in the routine manner toset the old legal mill to running. Someone had to go down to "The Tivoli"and find the prosecuting attorney, then a messenger had to go to "TheAlhambra" for the justice of the peace. The prosecuting attorney was"full" and the judge had just drawn one card to complete a straight flush, and had succeeded. 

In the meantime the Salvation Army was fully half way to Clugston's ranch. They had started out, as they said, "to see that Esau didn't get away. "They were going out there to see that Esau was brought into town. 

[Illustration: THE SALVATION ARMY. ]

What happened after they got there I only know from hearsay, for I was nota member of the Salvation Army at that time. But I got it from one ofthose present, that they found Esau down in the sage brush on the bottomsthat lie between the abrupt corner of Sheep Mountain and the LittleLaramie River. They captured him, but he died soon after, as it was toldme, from the effects of opium taken with suicidal intent. I rememberseeing Esau the next morning and I thought there were signs of ropium, asthere was a purple streak around the neck of deceased, together with otherexternal phenomena not peculiar to opium. 

But the great difficulty with the Salvation Army was that it didn't wantto bring Esau into town. A long, cold night ride with a person in Esau'scondition was disagreeable. Twenty miles of lonely road with a deceasedmurderer in the bottom of the wagon is depressing. Those of my readers whohave tried it will agree with me that it is not calculated to promotehilarity. So the Salvation Army stopped at Whatley's ranch to get warm, hoping that someone would steal the remains and elope with them. Theystayed some time and managed to "give away" the fact that there was areward of $5, 000 out for Esau, dead or alive. The Salvation Army even wentso far as to betray a great deal of hilarity over the easy way it hadnailed the reward, or would as soon as said remains were delivered up andidentified. 

Mr. Whatley thought that the Salvation Army was having a kind of walkaway, so he slipped out at the back door of the ranch, put Esau into his ownwagon and drove away to town. Remember, this is the way it was told to me. 

Mr. Whatley hadn't gone more than half a mile when he heard the wild anddisappointed yells of the Salvation Army. He put the buckskin on the backsof his horses without mercy, driven on by the enraged shouts and yells ofhis infuriated pursuers. He reached town about midnight, and his pursuersdisappeared. But what was he to do with Esau?

He drove around all over town, trying to find the official who signed forthe deceased. Mr. Whatley went from house to house like a vegetable man, seeking sadly for the party who would give him a $5, 000 check for Esau. Nothing could be more depressing than to wake up one man after another outof a sound sleep and invite him to come out to the buggy and identify theremains. One man went out and looked at him. He said he didn't know howothers felt about it, but he allowed that anybody who would pay $5, 000 forsuch a remains as Esau's could not have very good taste. 

Gradually it crept through Mr. Whatley's wool that the Salvation Army hadbeen working him, so he left Esau at the engine house and went home. Onhis ranch he nailed up a large board on which had been painted in antiquecharacters with a paddle and tar the following stanzas:

 Vigilance Committees, Salvation Armies, Morgues, or young physicians who may have deceased people on their hands, are requested to refrain from conferring them on to the undersigned. 

 People who contemplate shuffling off their own or other people's mortal coils, will please not do so on these grounds. 

 The Salvation Army of the Rocky Mountains is especially hereby warned to keep off the grass!

 James Whatley. 

The Indian Orator. 

I like to read of the Indian orator in the old school books. Most everyonedoes. It is generally remarkable that the American Demosthenes, so far, has dwelt in the tepee, and lived on the debris of the deer and thebuffalo. I mean to say that the school readers have impressed us with thegreat magnetism of the crude warrior who dwelt in the wilderness and atehis game, feathers and all, while he studied the art of swaying theaudience by his oratorical powers. 

I am inclined to think that Black Hawk and Logan must have been fortunatein securing mighty able private secretaries, or that they stood in withthe stenographers of their day. At least, the Blue Juniata warriors of ourtime, from Little Crow, Red Iron, Standing Buffalo, Hole-in-the-Day andSitting Bull, to Victoria, Colorow, Douglas, Persume, Captain Jack andShavano, seem to do better as lobbyists than they do as orators. They maybe keen, logical and shrewd, but they are not eloquent. In some minds, Black Hawk will ever appear as the Patrick Henry of his people; but Iprefer to honor his unknown, unhonored and unsung amanuensis. Think what agodsend such a man would have been to Senator Tabor. 

The Indian orator of to-day is not scholarly and grand. He is soiled, ignorant and sedentary in his habits. An orator ought to take care of hishealth. He cannot overload his stomach and make a bronze Daniel Webster ofhimself. He cannot eat a raw buffalo for breakfast and at once attack thequestion of tariff for revenue only. His brain is not clear enough. Hecannot digest the mammalia of North America and seek out the delicateintricacies of the financial problem at the same time. All scientists andphysiologists will readily see why this is true. 

It is quite popular to say that the modern Indian has seen too much ofcivilization. This may be true. Anyhow, civilization has seen too much ofhim. I hope the day will never come when the pale face and the WhiteFather will have to stay on their reservation, whether the red man does ornot. 

Indian eloquence, toned down by the mellow haze of a hundred years, soundsvery well, but the clarion voice of the red orator has died away. Thestony figure, the eagle eye, the matchless presence, have all ceased topalpitate. 

He does not say: "I am an aged hemlock. I am dead at the top. The forestis filled with the ghosts of my people. I hear their moans on the nightwinds and in the sighing pines. " He does not talk in the blank verse of acentury ago. He uses a good many blanks, but it is not blank verse. Eventhe Indian's friend would admit that it was not blank verse. Perhaps itmight be called blankety verse. 

Once he pleaded for the land of his fathers. Now he howls for grub, gunsand fixed ammunition. 

I tried to interview a big Crow chief once. I had heard some Sioux, andlearned a few irrelevant and disconnected Ute phrases. I connected thesewith some Spanish terms and hoped to get a reply, and keep up a kind ofrunning conversation that might mislead a friend who was with me, into thebelief that I was as familiar with the Indian tongue as with my own. Ibegan conversing with him in my polyglot manner. I did not get a reply. Iconversed with him some more in a desultory way, for I had heard that hewas a great orator in his tribe, and I wanted to get his views on nationalaffairs. Still he was silent. He would not even answer me. I got hostileand used some badly damaged Spanish on him. Then I used some sprained anddislocated German on him, but he didn't seem to wot whereof I spoke. 

Then my friend, with all the assurance of a fresh young manhood, began totalk with the great warrior in the English language, and incidentallyasked him about a new Indian agent, who had the name of being a bogusChristian with an eye to the main chance. 

My friend talked very loud, with the idea that the chieftain couldunderstand any language if spoken so that you could hear it in the nextTerritory. At the mention of the Indian agent's name, the Crow statesmanbrightened up and made a remark. He simply said: "Ugh! too much God and noflour. "

You Heah Me, Sah!

Col. Visscher, of Denver, who is delivering his lecture, "Sixty Minutes inthe War, " tells a good story on himself of an episode, or something ofthat nature, that occurred to him in the days when he was the amanuensisof George D. Prentice. 

Visscher, in those days, was a fair-haired young man, with pale blue eyes, and destitute of that wealth of brow and superficial area of polished domewhich he now exhibits on the rostrum. He was learning the lesson of lifethen, and every now and then he would bump up against an octagonal mass ofcold-pressed truth of the never-dying variety that seemed to kind of stunand concuss him. 

One day Mr. Visscher wandered into a prominent hotel in Louisville, and, observing with surprise and pleasure that "boiled lobster" was one of thedelicacies on the bill of fare, he ordered one. 

He never had seen lobster, and a rare treat seemed to be in store for him. He breathed in what atmosphere there was in the dining-room, and waitedfor his bird. At last it was brought in. Mr. Visscher took one hasty lookat the great scarlet mass of voluptuous limbs and oceanic nippers, andsighed. The lobster was as large as a door mat, and had a very angry andinflamed appearance. Visscher ordered in a powerful cocktail to give himcourage, and then he tried to carve off some of the breast. 

The lobster is honery even in death. He is eccentric and trifling. Thosewho know him best are the first to evade him and shun him. Visscher hadfailed to straddle the wish bone with his fork properly, and the talentedbird of the deep rolling sea slipped out of the platter, waved itselfacross the horizon twice, and buried itself in the bosom of the eminentand talented young man. The eminent and talented young man took it in hisnapkin, put it carefully on the table, and went away. 

As he passed out, the head waiter said:

"Mr. Visscher, was there anything the matter with your lobster?"

Visscher is a full-blooded Kentuckian, and answered in the courteousdialect of the blue-grass country. 

"Anything the matter with my lobster, sah? No, sah. The lobster is veryvigorous, sah. If you had asked me how I was, sah, I should have answeredyou very differently, sah. I am not well at all, sah. If I were as well, and as ruddy, and as active as that lobster, sah, I would live forever, sah. You heah me, sah?

"Why, of course, I am not familiar with the habits of the lobster, sah, and do not know how to kearve the bosom of the bloomin' peri of the summersea, but that's no reason why the inflamed reptile should get up on hishind feet and nestle up to me, sah, in that earnest and forthwith manner, sah. 

"I love dumb beasts, sah, and they love me, sah; but when they are dead, sah, and I undertake to kearve them, sah, I desiah, sah, that they shouldremain as the undertakah left them, sah. You doubtless heah me, sah!"

Plato. 

Plato was a Greek philosopher who flourished about 426 B. C. , and kept onflourishing for eighty-one years after that, when he suddenly ceased do so. He early took to poetry, but when he found that his poems were rejected bythe Greek papers, he ceased writing poetry and went into the philosophybusiness. At that time Greece had no regular philosopher, and so Platosoon got all he could do. 

Plato was a pupil of Socrates, who was himself no slouch of aphilosopher. Many and many a day did Socrates take his little class ofkindergarten philosophers up the shady banks of the Ilissus, and sit allday discoursing to his pupils on deep and difficult doctrines, while hisunsandaled feet were bathed in the genial tide. Many happy hours werethus spent. Socrates would take his dinner or tell some wonderful taleto his class, whereby he would win their dinner himself. Then in thedeep Athenian shade, with his bare, Gothic feet in the clear, calmwaters of the Ilissus, he would eat the Grecian doughnut of his pupils, and while he spoke in poetic terms of his belief, he would dig his heelin the mud and heave a heart-broken sigh. 

Such was Socrates, the great teacher. He got a small salary, and wentbarefoot till after Thanksgiving. He was a great tutor, and boardedaround, teaching in the open air while the mosquitos bit his bare feet. No tutor ever tuted with a more unselfish purpose or a smaller salary. 

Plato maintained, among other things, that evil is connected with matter, and aside from matter we do not find evil existing. That is true. Atleast, such evil as we might find apart from matter would be outside thejurisdiction of a police court. I think Plato was correct. Evil andmatter are inseparable. That's what's the matter. 

It is quite common for us to say that virtue is its own reward. Platoheld that, while it was better to be virtuous as a matter of economy andultimate peace than not to be virtuous at all, he believed in beingvirtuous for a higher reason. Probably it was notoriety. He would ratherbe right than be president. He believed in being good just for theexcitement of it, and the notice it would attract, and not because itpaid. Plato was a great virtuoso. 

Socrates would have been called a crank if he had lived in our day andage, and if Plato were to go into London or New York and talk oforganizing a society for the encouragement of virtue among adult maletaxpayers he would have a lonesome time of it. Be virtuous and you willbe happy was a favorite motto with Plato. The legend is still quoted bythose who love to ransack the dead past. 

[Illustration: NEPTUNE TAKING A RIDE. ]

Pluto was quite another party, and some get him mixed up with Plato. They were not related in any way, Pluto being a son of Saturn and Rhea, who flourished at about the same time as Plato. Pluto was a brother ofJupiter and Neptune, and when the estate of Saturn was wound up, Jupiterwanted the earth, and he got it. Neptune wanted the codfish conservatoryand the mermaid's home, so he took the deep, deep sea, and even yet herides around in a gold spangled stone boat on the pale green billows ofthe summer sea, jabbing a pickerel ever and anon with a three prongedfork. He leads a gay life, going to picnics with the mermaids in theircoral caves, or attending their full evening dress parties, clad in atrident and a fall beard. He loves the sea, the lone, blue sea, andthose who have seen him turning handsprings on a sponge lawn, or ridingin his water-tight chariot with his feet over the dash-board, beside aslim young mermaid with Paris green hair, and dressed in atight-fitting, low-neck dorsal fin, say he is a lively old party. 

But Pluto was different. He stood around till the estate was all closedup, and it looked as though he had got left. Just then the administratorsays: "Why, here's Pluto. He is going to come out of the little end ofthe horn. He will have to hustle for himself, " Pluto resented this andclinched with the administrator. They fought till each had a watch pocketon the brow and an Irish sunset symphony in green under the eye, whileJupiter and Neptune stood by and encouraged the fight. Jupiter rathertook sides with his brother, and Neptune stood in with the administrator. In the midst of the confusion Jupiter speaks up and says: "Swat him underthe ear, Pluto. " Whereupon Neptune says to the administrator. "Givehim--hail. " The administrator paused and said that was a good suggestion. He would do so. And so he forgave Pluto and gave him--sheol. 

The Expensive Word. 

Much that is annoying in this life is occasioned by the use of a highpriced word where a cheaper one would do. In these days of failure, shortage at both ends and financial stringency generally, I often wonderthat some people should go on, day after day, using just as extravagantlanguage as they did during the flush times. When I get hard up the firstthing I do is to economize in my expressions in every day conversation. Ifthere is a marked stringency in business, I lay aside first, my French, then my Latin, and finally my German. Should the times become greatlydepressed and failures and assignments become frequent, I begin to lop offthe large words in my own language, beginning with "incomprehensibility, ""unconstitutionally, " etc. , etc. 

Julius Caesar's motto used to be, "Avoid an unusual word as you would arock at sea, " and Jule was right about it, too. Large and unusual words, especially in the mouths of ignorant people, are worse than "Rough onRats" in a boarding-house pie. 

Years ago there used to be a pompous cuss in southern Wisconsin, who was aself-made man. Extremely so. Those who used to hear him assert again andagain that he was a self-made man always felt renewed confidence in theCreator. 

He rose one evening in a political meeting, and swelling out his bosom, ashis eagle eye rested on the chairman, he said:

"Mr. Cheerman! I move you that the cheer do appoint a committee of threeto attend to the matter under discussion, and that sayed committee beclothed by the cheer with ominiscient and omnipotent powers. "

The motion was duly seconded and the cheerman said he guessed that itwouldn't be necessary to put it to a vote. 

"I guess it will be all right, Mr. Pinkham. I guess there'll be nodeclivity to that. "

And so the committee was appointed and clothed with omniscient andomnipotent powers, there being no declivity to it. 

We had a self-made lawyer at one time in the northern part of the Statewho would rather find a seventy-five cent word and use it in a speechwhere it did not belong than to eat a good square meal. He was more fatalto the King's English than O'Dynamite Rossa. One day he was telling howmethodical one of the county officials was. 

"Why, " said he, "I never saw a man do so much and do it so easy. But thesecret of it is plain enough. You see, he has a regular rotunda ofbusiness every day. "

If he meant anything, I suppose he meant a routine of business, but a manwould have to be a mind reader to follow him some days when he had aboutsix fingers of cough medicine aboard and began to paw around in the darkand musty garret of his memory for moth-eaten words that didn't meananything. 

A neighbor of mine went to Washington during the Guiteau trial and hasbeen telling us about it ever since. He is one of those people who don'twant to be close and stingy about what they know. He likes to go throughlife shedding information right and left. He likes to get a crowd aroundhim and then tell how he was in Washington at the time of the "postmortise examination. " "Boys, you may talk all your a mind to, but thegreatest thing I saw in Washington, " said he, "was Dr. Mary Walker on thestreet every morning riding one of these philosophers. "

[Illustration: HE PAINTED THE FENCE GREEN. ]

He painted the top of his fence green, last year, so it would "kind ofcombinate with his blinds. "

If he would make his big words "combinate" with what he means a littlebetter, he would not attract so much attention. But he don't care. Hehates to see a big, fat word loafing around with nothing to do, so hethrows one in occasionally for exercise, I guess. 

In the Minnesota legislature, in 1867, they had under discussion a bill toincrease the per diem of members from three dollars to five dollars. Amember of the lower house, who voted for the measure, was hauled over thecoals by one of his constituents and charged with corruption in nounmeasured terms. To all this the legislator calmly answered that when hegot down to the capital and found out the awful price of board, heconcluded that his "per diadem" ought to be increased, and so he supportedthe measure. Then the belligerent constituent said:

"I beg your pardon and acquit you of all charges of corruption, for alegislator who does not know the difference between a crown of glory andthe price of a day's work is too big a blankety blanked fool to beconvicted of an intentional wrong. "

Petticoats at the Polls. 

There have been many reasons given, first and last, why women should notvote, but I desire to say, in the full light of a ripe experience, thatsome of them are fallacious. I refer more particularly to the argumentthat it will degrade women to go to the polls and vote like a little man. While I am not and have never been a howler for female suffrage, I mustadmit that it is much more of a success than prohibition and speculativescience. 

My wife voted eight years with my full knowledge and consent, and to-day Icannot see but that she is as docile and as tractable as when she won mytrusting heart. 

Now those who know me best will admit that I am not a ladies' man, and, therefore, what I may say here is not said to secure favor and gratefulsmiles. I am not attractive and I am not in politics. I believe that I amhomelier this winter than usual. There are reasons why I believe that whatI may say on this subject will be sincere and not sensational or selfish. 

It has been urged that good women do not generally exercise the right ofsuffrage, when they have the opportunity, and that only those whose socialrecord has been tarnished a good deal go to the polls. This is not true. 

It is the truth that a good full vote always shows a list of the bestwomen and the wives of the best men. A bright day makes a better showingof lady voters than a bad one, and the weather makes a more perceptibledifference in the female vote than the male, but when things are excitingand the battle is red-hot, and the tocsin of war sounds anon, the wife andmother puts on her armor and her sealskin sacque and knocks thingscross-eyed. 

It is generally supposed that the female voter is a pantaloonatic, a halfhorse, half alligator kind of woman, who looks like Dr. Mary Walker andhas the appearance of one who has risen hastily in the night at the alarmof fire and dressed herself partially in her own garments and partially inher husband's. This is a popular error. In Wyoming, where female suffragehas raged for years, you meet quiet, courteous and gallant gentlemen, andfair, quiet, sensible women at the polls, where there isn't a loud orprofane word, and where it is an infinitely more proper place to send ayoung lady unescorted than to the postoffice in any city in the Union. Youcan readily see why this is so. The men about the polls are alwayscandidates and their friends. That is the reason that neither party canafford to show the slightest rudeness toward a voter. The man who onWednesday would tell her to go and soak her head, perhaps, would standbareheaded to let her pass on Tuesday. While she holds a smashed ballotshoved under the palm of her gray kid glove she may walk over thecandidate's prostrate form with impunity and her overshoes if she choosesto. 

Weeks and months before election in Wyoming, the party with the longestpurse subsidizes the most livery stables and carriages. Then, on theeventful day, every conveyance available is decorated with a politicalplacard and driven by a polite young man who is instructed to improve thetime. Thus every woman in Wyoming has a chance to ride once a year, atleast. Lately, however, many prefer to walk to the polls, and they go inpairs, trios and quartettes, voting their little sentiments and calmlyreturning to their cookies and crazy quilts as though politics didn't jartheir mental poise a minute. 

It is possible, and even probable, that a man and his wife may disagree onpolitics as they might on religion. The husband may believe in AndrewJackson and a relentless hell, while his wife may be a stalwart and ratherliberal on the question of eternal punishment. If the husband manages hiswife as he would a clothes-wringer, and turns her through life by a crank, he will, no doubt, work her politically; but if she has her own ideasabout things, she will naturally act upon them, while the man who ishenpecked in other matters till he can't see out of his eyes, will behenpecked, no doubt, in the matter of national and local politics. 

These are a few facts about the actual workings of female suffrage, and Ido not tackle the great question of the ultimate results upon thepolitical machinery if woman suffrage were to become general. I do notpretend to say as to that. I know a great deal, but I do not know that. There are millions of women, no doubt who are better qualified to vote, and yet cannot, than millions of alleged men who do vote; but no one cantell now what the ultimate effect of a change might be. 

So far as Wyoming is concerned, the Territory is prosperous and happy. Isee, also, that a murderer was hung by process of law there the other day. That looks like the onward march of reform, whether female suffrage hadanything to do with it or not. And they're going to hang another in Marchif the weather is favorable and executive clemency remains dormant, as Ithink it will. 

All these things look hopeful. We can't tell what the Territory would havebeen without female suffrage, but when they begin to hang men by lawinstead of by moonlight, the future begins to brighten up. When you haveto get up in the night to hang a man every little while and don't get anyper diem for it, you feel as though you were a good way from home. 

The Sedentary Hen. 

Though generally cheerful and content with her lot, the hen at timesbecomes moody, sullen and taciturn. We are often called upon to notice andprofit by the genial and sunny disposition of the hen, and yet there aretimes in her life when she is morose, cynical, and the prey of consumingmelancholy. At such times not only her own companions, but man himselfshuns the hen. 

At first she seems to be preoccupied only. She starts and turns pale whensuddenly spoken to. Then she leaves her companions and seems to be thevictim of hypochondria. Then her mind wanders. At last you come upon hersuddenly some day, seated under the currant bushes. You sympathize withher and you seek to fondle her. She then picks a small memento out of theback of your hand. You then gently but firmly coax her out of there with ahoe, and you find that she has been seated for some time on an old croquetball, trying to hatch out a whole set of croquet balls. This shows thather mind is affected. You pick up the croquet ball, and find it hot andfeverish, so you throw it into the shade of the woodshed. Anon, you findyour demented hen in the loft of the barn hovering over a door knob andtrying by patience and industry to hatch out a hotel. 

When a hen imagines that she is inspired to incubate, she at once ceasesto be an ornament to society and becomes a crank. She violates all thelaws and customs of nature and society in trying to hatch a conservatoryby setting through the long days and nights of summer on a small flowerpot. 

Man may win the affections of the tiger, the lion, or the huge elephant, and make them subservient to his wishes, but the setting hen is notsusceptible to affection. You might as well love the Manitoba blizzard ortry to quell the cyclone by looking calmly in its eye. The setting hen isfilled with hatred for every living thing. She loves to brood over herwrongs or anything else she can find to squat on. 

I once owned a hen that made a specialty of setting. She never ceased tobe the proud anonymous author of a new, warm egg, but she yearned to be aparent. She therefore seated herself on a nest where other hens were inthe habit of leaving their handiwork for inspection. She remained thereduring the summer hatching steadily on while the others laid, until shefilled my barnyard with little orphaned henlets of different ages. Sheremained there night and day, patiently turning out poultry for me to be afather to. I brought up on the bottle about one hundred that summer thathad been turned out by this morbidly maternal hen. All she seemed to askin return was my kind regards and esteem. I fed her upon the nest andhumored her in every way. Every day she became a parent, and every dayadded to my responsibility. 

[Illustration: SUCCESS WITH CHICKENS. ]

One day I noticed that she seemed weak and there was a far away look inher eye. For the first time the horrible truth burst upon my mind. Iburied my face in the haymow and I am not ashamed to say that I wept. Strong man as I am, I am not too proud to say that I soaked that haymowthrough with unavailing tears. 

My hen was dying even then. Her breath came hot and quick like the swiftrush of a hot ball that caves in the short-stop and speeds away tocenter-field. 

The next morning one hundred chickens of various sizes were motherless, and if anything had happened to me they would have been fatherless. 

For many years I have made a close study of the setting hen, but I amstill unsettled as to what is best to do with her. She is a freak ofnature, a disagreeable anomaly, a fussy phenomenon. Logic, rhetoric andmetaphor are all alike to the setting hen. You might as well go down intothe bosom of Vesuvius and ask it to postpone the next eruption. 

A Bright Future for Pugilism. 

The recent prominence of Mr. John E. Dempsey, better known as JackDempsey, of New York, brings to mind a four days' trip taken in hiscompany from Portland, Oregon, to St. Paul, over the Northern Pacific. 

There were three pugilists in the party besides myself, viz. Dempsey, DaveCampbell and Tom Cleary. We made a grand, triumphant tour across thecountry together, and I may truthfully state that I never felt so free tosay anything I wanted to--to other passengers--as I did at that time. Iwish I could afford to take at least one pugilist with me all the time. Intraveling about the country lecturing, a good pugilist would be of greatassistance. I would like to set him on the man who always asks: "Where doyou go to from here, Mr. Nye?" He does not ask because he wants to know, for the next moment he asks right over again. I do not know why he asks, but surely it is not for the purpose of finding out. 

Well, throughout our long journey across the State of Oregon and theTerritories of Idaho, Montana and Dakota, and the State of Minnesota, itwas one continual ovation. Dempsey had a world-wide reputation, I found, co-extensive with the horizon, as I may say, and bounded only by thezodiac. 

In my great forthcoming work, entitled "Half-Hours with Great Men, orEminent People Which I Have Saw, " I shall give a fuller description ofthis journey. The book will be a great boon. 

Mr. Dempsey is not a man who would be picked out as a great man. You mightpass by him two or three times without recognizing his eminence, and yet, at a scrapping matinee or swatting recital, he seems to hold his audiencesat his own sweet will--also his antagonist. 

Mr. Dempsey does not crave notoriety. He seems rather to court seclusion. This is characteristic of the man. See how he walked around all over theState of New York last week--in the night, too--in order to evade thecrowd. 

His logic, however, is wonderful. Though quiet and unassuming in hismanner, his arguments are powerful and generally make a large protuberancewherever they alight. 

Nothing is more pleasing than the sight of a man who has risen by his ownunaided effort, fought his way up, as it were, and yet who is not vain. Mr. Dempsey conversed with me frequently during our journey, and did notseem to feel above me. 

I opened the conversation by telling him that I had seen a number of hisworks. Nothing pleases a young author so much as a little friendly remarkin relation to his work. I had seen a study of his one day in New Yorklast spring. It was an italic nose with quotation marks on each side. 

It was a very happy little bon mot on Mr. Dempsey's part, and attracted agood deal of notice at the time. 

Mr. Dempsey is not a college graduate, as many suppose. He is a self-mademan. This should be a great encouragement to our boys who are now unknown, and whose portraits have not as yet appeared in the sporting papers. 

But Mr. Dempsey's great force as a debater is less, perhaps, in the matterthan in the manner. His delivery is good and his gestures cannot fail toconvince the most skeptical. Striking in appearance, aggressive in hisnature, and happy in his gestures, he is certain to attract the attentionof the police, and he cannot fail to rivet the eye of his adversary. I sawone of his adversaries, not long ago, whose eye had been successfullyriveted in that way. 

And yet, John E. Dempsey was once a poor boy. He had none of theadvantages which wealth and position bring. But, confident of his latentability as a middle-weight convincer, he toiled on, ever on, sitting upuntil long after other people had gone to bed, patiently knocking outthose who might be brought to him for that purpose. He never hung backbecause the way looked long and lonely. And what is the result? To-day, inthe full vigor of manhood, he is sought out and petted by everyone whotakes an interest in the onward march of pugilism. 

It is a wonderful record, though brief. It shows what patient industrywill accomplish unaided. Had John E. Dempsey hesitated to enter the ringand said that he would rather go to school, where he would be safe, hemight to-day be an educated man; but what does that amount to here inAmerica, where everybody can have an education? He would have lost histalent as a slugger, and drifted steadily downward, perhaps, till hebecame a school-teacher or a narrow-chested editor, writing things dayafter day just to gratify the morbid curiosity of a sin-cursed world. 

In closing, I would like to say that I hope I have not expressed anopinion in the above that may hereafter be used against me. Do notunderstand me to be the foe of education. Education and refinement aregood enough in their places, but how shall we attract attention by tryingto become refined and educated in a land where, as I say, education andrefinement seem almost to run rampant. 

Heretofore, in America, pugilism has been made subservient to the commonschools. Pugilism and polygamy have both been crowded to the wall. Nowpugilism is about to assert itself. The tin ear and the gory nose willsoon come to the front, and the day is not far distant when progressivepugilism and the prize-ring will take the place of the poorly ventilatedcommon school and the enervating prayer meeting. 

The Snake Indian. 

There are about 5, 000 Snake or Shoshone Indians now extant, the greaterpart being in Utah and Nevada, though there is a reservation in Idaho andanother in Wyoming. 

The Shoshone Indian is reluctant to accept of civilization on the Europeanplan. He prefers the ruder customs which have been handed down from fatherto son along with other hairlooms. I use the word hairlooms in itsbroadest sense. 

There are the Shoshones proper and the Utes or Utahs, to which have beenadded by some authorities the Comanches, and Moquis of New Mexico andArizona, the Netelas and other tribes of California. The Shoshone, wherever found, is clothed in buckskin and blanket in winter, but dressedmore lightly in summer, wearing nothing but an air of intense gloom inAugust. To this he adds on holidays a necklace made from the store teethof the hardy pioneer. 

[Illustration: HOLIDAY COSTUME. ]

The Snake or Shoshone Indian is passionately fond of the game known aspoker among us, and which, I learn, is played with cards. It is a game ofchance, though skill and a thorough knowledge of firearms are of greatuse. The Indians enter into this game with great zeal, and lend to it thewonderful energy which they have preserved from year to year by abstainingfrom the debilitating effects of manual labor. All day long the redwarrior sits in his skin boudoir, nursing the sickly and reluctant"flush, " patient, silent and hopeful. Through the cold of winter in thedesolate mountains, he continues to

 "Hope on, hope ever, "

that he will "draw to fill. " Far away up the canyon he hears the sturdyblows of his wife's tomahawk as she slaughters the grease wood and thesage brush for the fire in his gilded hell where he sits and woos the lazyGoddess of Fortune. 

With the Shoshone, poker is not alone a relaxation, the game wherewith towear out a long and listless evening, but it is a passion, a duty and adevotion. He has a face designed especially for poker. It never shows asign of good or evil fortune. You might as well try to win a smile from arailroad right of way. The full hand, the fours, threes, pairs andbob-tail flushes are all the same to him, if you judge by his face. 

When he gets hungry he cinches himself a little tighter and continues to"rastle" with fate. You look at his smoky, old copper cent of a face, andyou see no change. You watch him as he coins the last buckshot of histribe and later on when he goes forth a pauper, and the corners of hisfamine-breeding mouth have never moved, His little black, smoke-inflamedeyes have never lighted with triumph or joy. He is the great aboriginalstoic and sylvan dude. He does not smile. He does not weep. It certainlymust be intensely pleasant to be a wild, free, lawless, irresponsible, natural born fool. 

[Illustration: GOING AWAY BROKE. ]

The Shoshones proper include the Bannocks, which are again subdivided intothe Koolsitakara or Buffalo Eaters, on Wind River, the Tookarika orMountain Sheep Eaters, on Salmon or Suabe Eivers, the Shoshocas or WhiteKnives, sometimes called Diggers, of the Humbolt Eiver and the Great SaltLake basin. Probably the Hokandikahs, Yahooskins and the Wahlpapes aresubdivisions of the Digger tribe. I am 'not sure of this, but I shall notsuspend my business till I can find out about it. If I cannot get at agreat truth right off I wait patiently and go right on drawing my salary. 

The Shoshones live on the government and other small game. They will eatanything when hungry, from a buffalo down to a woodtick. The Shoshone doesnot despise small things. He loves insects in any form. He loves to makepets of them and to study their habits in his home life. 

[Illustration: THE HOME CIRCLE. ]

Formerly, when a great Shoshone warrior died, they killed his favoritewife over his grave, so that she could go to the happy hunting groundswith him, but it is not so customary now. I tried to impress on an oldShoshone brave once that they ought not to do that. I tried to show himthat it would encourage celibacy and destroy domestic ties in his tribe. Since then there has been quite a stride toward reform among them. Insteadof killing the widow on the death of the husband, the husband takes suchgood care of his health and avoids all kinds of intellectual strain orphysical fatigue, that late years there are no widows, but widowers justseem to swarm in the Shoshone tribe. The woods are full of them. 

Now, if they would only kill the widower over the grave of the wife, theIndian's future would assume a more definite shape. 

Roller Skating. 

I have once more tried to ride a pair of roller skates. That is the reasonI got down on the rink and down on roller skates. That is the reasonseveral people got down on me. That is also the reason why I now state ina public manner, to a lost and undone race, that unless the roller-rink isat once abolished, the whole civilized race will at once be plunged intoarnica. 

I had tried it once before, but had not carried my experiments to asuccessful termination. I made a trip around the rink last August, but wasruled out by the judges for incompetency, and advised to skate among thepeople who were hostile to the government of the United States, while theproprietors repaired the rink. 

On the 9th of June I nestled in the bosom of a cyclone to excess, and ithas required the bulk of the succeeding months for nature to glue the boneof my leg together in proper shape. That is the reason I have not giventhe attention to roller-skating that I should. 

A few weeks ago I read what Mr. Talmage said about the great nationalvice. It was his opinion that, if we skated in a proper spirit, we couldleave the rink each evening with our immortal souls in good shape. 

Somehow it got out that on Thursday evening I would undertake the feat ofskating three rounds in three hours with no protection to my scruples, forone-half the gate money, Talmage rules. So there was quite a largeaudience present with opera glasses. Some had umbrellas, especially on thefront rows. These were worn spread, in order to ward off fragments of therink which might become disengaged and set in motion by atmosphericdisturbances. 

In obedience to a wild, Wagnerian snort from the orchestra, I came intothe arena with my skates in hand. I feel perfectly at home before anaudience when I have my skates in hand. It is a morbid desire to wear theskates on my feet that has always been my _bete noire_. Will the officeboy please give me a brass check for that word so that I can get it when Igo away?

My first thought, after getting myself secured to the skates, was this:"Am I in the proper frame of mind? Am I doing this in the right spirit? AmI about to skate in such a way as to lift the fog of unbelief which nowenvelopes a sinful world, or shall I deepen the opaque night in which myrace is wrapped?"

Just then that end of the rink erupted in a manner so forthwith and so_tout ensemble_ that I had to push it back in place with my person. Inever saw anything done with less delay or less languor. 

The audience went wild with enthusiasm, and I responded to the encore bywriting my name in the air with my skates. 

This closed the first seance, and my trainer took me in the dressing-roomto attend a consultation of physicians. After the rink carpenter hadjacked up the floor a little I went out again. I had no fears about myability to perform the mechanical part assigned me, but I was stillworried over the question of whether it would or would not be of lastingbenefit to mankind. 

Those who have closely scrutinized my frame in repose have admitted that Iam fearfully and wonderfully made. Students of the human frame say thatthey never saw such a wealth of looseness and limberness lavished upon oneperson. They claim that nature bestowed upon me the hinges and jointsintended for a whole family, and therefore when I skate the air seems tobe perfectly lurid with limbs. I presume that this is true; though I haveso little leisure while skating in which to observe the method itself, theplot or animus of the thing, as it were, that my opinion would be oflittle value to the scientist. 

I am led to believe that the roller skate is certainly a great civilizerand a wonderful leveler of mankind. If we so skate that when the summonscomes to seek our ward in the general hospital, where each shall heal hisbusted cuticle within the walls where rinkists squirm, we go not like themoral wreck, morally paralyzed, but like a hired man taking his medicine, and so forth--we may skate with perfect impunity, or anyone else to whomwe may be properly introduced by our cook. 

No More Frontier. 

The system of building railroads into the wilderness, and then allowingthe wilderness to develop afterward, has knocked the essential joy out ofthe life of the pioneer. At one time the hardy hewer of wood and drawer ofwater gave his lifetime willingly that his son might ride in the"varnished cars. " Now the Pullman palace car takes the New Yorker to thethreshold of the sea, or to the boundary line between the United Statesand the British possessions. 

It has driven out the long handled frying pan and the flapjack of twentyyears ago, and introduced the condensed milk and canned fruit of commerce. Along the highways, where once the hopeful hundreds marched with longhandled shovel and pick and pan, cooking by the way thin salt pork andflapjacks and slumgullion, now the road is lined with empty beer bottlesand peach cans that have outlived their usefulness. No landscape can bepicturesque with an empty peach can in the foreground any more than a lionwould look grand in a red monogram horse blanket and false teeth. 

[Illustration]

The modern camp is not the camp of the wilderness. It wears thehalf-civilized and shabby genteel garments of a sawed-off town. You knowthat if you ride a day you will be where you can get the daily papers andread them under the electric light. That robs the old canyons of theirsolemn isolation and peoples each gulch with the odor of codfish balls andcivilization. Civilization is not to blame for all this, and yet it seemssad. 

Civilization could not have done all this alone. It had to call to its aidthe infernal fruit can that now desolates the most obscure trail in theheart of the mountains. You walk over chaos where the "hydraulic" hasplowed up the valley like a convulsion, or you tread the yielding pathacross the deserted dump, and on all sides the rusty, neglected andhumiliated empty tin can stares at you with its monotonous, dude-likestare. 

An old timer said to me once: "I've about decided, Bill, that the West isa matter of history. When we cooked our grub over a sage brush fire wecould get fat and fight Indians, but now we fill our digesters with thecold pizen and pewter of the canned peach; we go to a big tavern and sticka towel under our chins and eat pie with a fork and heat up our carkisseswith antichrist coal, and what do we amount to? Nuthin! I used to chaseInjuns all day and eat raw salt pork at night, bekuz I dassent build afire, and still I felt better than I do now with a wad of tin-can solderin my stummick and a homesick feeling in my weather-beaten breast. 

"No, we don't have the fun we used to. We have more swarrees and sciaticaand one bloomin' thing and another of that kind, but we don't get onesnort of pure air and appetite in a year. They're bringin' in their blamedtelephones now and malaria and aigue and old sledge, and fun might as wellskip out. There ain't no frontier any more. All we've got left is theold-fashioned trantler joos and rhumatiz of '49. "

 Behind the red squaw's cayuse plug, The hand-car roars and raves, And pie-plant pies are now produced Above the Indian graves. I hear the oaths of pioneers, The caucus yet to be, The first low hum where soon will The fuzzy bumble bee. 

A Letter of Regrets. 

My dear Princess Beatrice--I received your kind invitation to come up toWhippingham on the 23d inst. And see you married, but I have not been ableto get there. The weather has been so hot this month, that, to tell youthe truth, Beatrice, I haven't been going anywhere to speak of. At first Ithought I would go anyhow, and even went so far as to pick out a nicecorner bracket to take along for a wedding present. Not so much for itsintrinsic value, of course, but so you would have something with my nameto it on a card that you could show to those English dudes, and let themknow that you had influential friends, even in America. But when I thoughtwhat a long, hard trip it would be, and how I would probably mash thatbracket on the cars before I got half way there, I gave it up. 

I am not personally acquainted with your inamorato, if that's all right, never having met him in our set; but I understand you have done well, andthat your husband is a rising young man of good family, and that he willnever allow you to put your hands into dishwater. I hope this is true andthat he does not drink. Rum has certainly paralyzed more dukes and suchthings than war has. I attribute this to the fact that princes and dukesare generally more reckless about exposing themselves to the demon rumthan to the rude alarums and one thing another of war. 

If you keep a girl I hope you will get a good one who knows her business. A green girl in the house of a newly-married princess is a great source ofannoyance. A friend of mine who got married last winter got a girl whosemind had been eaten by cut-worms and she had not discovered it. All thefaculty that had been spared her was that power of the mind which enabledher to charge $3 a week. She lubricated the buckwheat pancake griddle fora week with soap grease and a dash of castor oil, and when she wasdischarged she wept bitterly because capital with the iron heel ground thepoor servant girl into the dust. 

Probably you will take a little tour after the wedding is over. They aredoing that way a good deal in Boston this season. I thought you would likea pointer in the very lum-tumest thing to do, and so I write this. So longas you have the means to do this thing right, I think you ought to do so. You may never be married again, princess, and now is the time to paint theBritish Isles red. 

You can also get more concessions from your husband now, while he is alittle rattled, and temporarily knocked silly by the pomp and pageant ofmarrying into your family, and if you work it right you can maintain thissupremacy for years. Treat him with a gentle firmness, and do not weep onhis bosom if you detect the aroma of beer and bologna sausage on his youngbreath. Bologna and royalty do not seem to harmonize first-rate, butremember you can harass your husband if you choose, so that he will fallto even lower depths than bologna and Milwaukee beer. Do not aggravate himwhen he comes home tired, but help him do the chores and greet him with asmile. 

I'd just as soon tell you, Beatrice, that this smile racket is notoriginal with me. I read it in a paper. This paper went on to say that ayoung wife should always greet her husband with a smile on his return. Ishowed the article to my wife and suggested that it was a good scheme, andhoped she would try it on me sometime. She said if I would like to changeoff awhile, and take my smile when I got home instead of taking it downtown, we would make the experiment. The trouble with the average woman ofthe age in which we live, Beatrice, is that she is above her business. Shetries to be superior to her husband, and in many instances she succeeds. That is the bane of wedded life. Do not strive to be superior to yourhusband, Beatrice. If you do, it is good-bye, John. 

Treat him well at all times, whether he treats you well or not; then whenyour mother gets tired of reigning and wants to come down and spend thehot weather with you, she will be kindly greeted by her son-in-law. 

Do not allow the fact that you belong to the royal family to interferewith your fun, Beatrice. If you want to wear a Mother Hubbard dress on thethrone during hot weather, or mash a mosquito with your mother's sceptre, do so. Conventionality is a humbug and a nuisance, and I'd just as soontell you right here that if I could have gone to your wedding and worn alinen coat and a perspiration, I would have gone; but to stand aroundthere all day in a tight black suit of clothes, in a mixed crowd of dukes, and counts, and princes of high degree, most of whom are total strangersto me, is more than I can stand. 

I wish you would give my love to your mother and tell her just how it was. Make it as smooth as you can and break it to her gently. Tell her that theroyal family is spreading out so that I can't leave my work every time oneof its members gets married. Remember me to the Waleses, the Darmstadts, Princess Irene and Victoria, Mr. And Mrs. Prince Alexander of Bulgaria, also Prince Francis of Battenberg and the Countess Erbach Schomberg. Theywill all be there probably, and so will Lord Latham and Lord Edgcumbe. Iknow just how Edgcumbe will snort around there when he finds that I can'tbe there. Give my kind regards to any other lords, dukes, duchesses, dowagers or marchionesses who may inquire for me, and tell them all that Iwill be in London next year if the Prince of Wales will drop me a linestating that the moral tone of the city is such that it would be safe forme to come. 

[Illustration]

Venice. 

We arrived in Venice last evening, latitude 45 deg. 25 min, N. , longitude12 deg. 19 min. E. 

Venice is the home of the Venetian, and also where the gondola has itsnest and rears its young. It is also the headquarters for the paint knownas Venetian red. They use it in painting the town on festive occasions. This is the town where the Merchant of Venice used to do business, and thehome of Shylock, a broker, who sheared the Venetian lamb at the corner ofthe Rialto and the Grand Canal. He is now no more. I couldn't even find anold neighbor near the Rialto who remembered Shylock. From what I can learnof him, however, I am led to believe that he was pretty close in hisdeals, and liked to catch a man in a tight place and then make him squirm. Shylock, during the great panic in Venice, many years ago, it is said, hada chattel mortgage on more lives than you could shake a stick at. He wouldloan a small amount to a merchant at three per cent, a month, and secureit on a pound of the merchant's liver, or by a cut-throat mortgage on hisrespiratory apparatus. Then, when the paper matured, he would go up to thehouse with a pair of scales and a pie knife and demand a foreclosure. 

Venice is one of the best watered towns in Europe. You can hardly walk ablock without getting your feet wet, unless you ride in a gondola. 

The gondola is a long, slim hack without wheels and is worked aroundthrough the damp streets by a brunette man whose breath should be a sadframing to us all. He is called the gondolier. Sometimes he sings in a lowtone of voice and in a foreign tongue. I do not know where I have met somany foreigners as I have here in Europe, unless it was in New York, atthe polls. Wherever I go, I hear a foreign tongue. I do not know whetherthese people talk in the Italian language just to show off or not. Perhapsthey prefer it. London is the only place I have visited where the Bostondialect is used. London was originally settled by adventurers from Boston. The blood of some of the royal families of Massachusetts may be found inthe veins of London people. 

Wealthy young ladies in Venice do not run away with the coachman. Thereare no coaches, no coachmen and no horses in Venice. There are only fourhorses in Venice and they are made of copper and exhibited at St Mark's ascuriosities. 

The Accademia delle Belle Arti of Venice is a large picture store where Iwent yesterday to buy a few pictures for Christmas presents. A painting byTitian, the Italian Prang, pleased me very much, but I couldn't beat downthe price to where it would be any object for me to buy it. Besides, itwould be a nuisance to carry such a picture around with me all over theAlps, up the Rhine and through St. Lawrence county. I finally decided toleave it and secure something less awkward to carry and pay for. 

The Italians are quite proud of their smoky old paintings. I have oftenthought that if Venice would run less to art and more to soap, she wouldbe more apt to win my respect. Art is all right to a certain extent, butit can be run in the ground. It breaks my heart to know how lavish naturehas been with water here, and yet how the Venetians scorn to investigateits benefits. When a gondolier gets a drop of water on him, he swoons. Then he lies in a kind of coma till another gondolier comes along tobreathe in his face and revive him. 

She Kind of Coaxed Him. 

I never practiced law very much, but during the brief period that mysheet-iron sign was kissed by the Washoe zephyr, I had several oddexperiences. I'm sure that lawyers who practice for forty years, especially on the frontier or in a new country, could write a large bookthat would make mighty interesting reading. 

One day I was figuring up how much a man could save in ten years, payingforty dollars a month rent, and taking in two dollars and fifty cents permonth, when a large man with a sad eye and an early purple tumor on theside of his head, came in and asked me if my name was Nye. I told him itwas and asked him to take a chair and spit on the stove a few times, andmake himself entirely at home. 

He did so. 

After answering in a loud, tremulous tone of voice that we were havingrather a backward spring, he produced a red cotton handkerchief and tookout of it a deed which he submitted to my ripe and logical legal mind. 

I asked him if that was his name that appeared in the body of the deed asgrantor. He said it was. I then asked him why his wife had not signed it, as it seemed to be the homestead, and her name appeared in the instrumentwith that of her husband, but her signature wasn't at the foot, though hisname was duly signed, witnessed and acknowledged. 

"Well, " said he, "there's where the gazelle comes in. " He then took a biteoff the corner of a plug of tobacco about as big as a railroad land grant, and laid two twenty dollar gold pieces on the desk near my arm. I tookthem and tapped them together like the cashier of the Bank of England, and, disguising my annoyance over the little episode, told him to go on. 

"Well, " said the large man, fondling the wen which nestled lovingly in hisfaded Titian hair, "my wife has conscientious scruples against signingthat deed. We have been married about a year now, but not actively for thepast eleven months. I'm kind of _ex-officio_ husband, as you might say. After we'd been married about a month a little incident occurred whichmade a riffle, as you might say, in our domestic tide. I was divisionmaster on the U. P. , and one night I got an order to go down towardsSidney and look at a bridge. Of course I couldn't get back till the nextevening. So I sighed and switched off to the superintendent's office, expecting to go over on No. 4 and look at the bridge. At the office theytold me that I needn't go till Tuesday, so I strolled up town and got homeabout nine o'clock, went in with a latch key, just as a mutual friend wentout through the bed-room window, taking a sash that I paid two dollarsfor. I didn't care for the sash, because he left a pair of pantaloonsworth twelve dollars and some silver in the pockets, but I thought it wassuch odd taste for a man to wear a sash without his uniform. 

"Well, as I had documentary evidence against my wife, I told her she couldtake a vacation. She cried a good deal, but it didn't count I suffered agood deal, but tears did not avail. It takes a good deal of damp weatherto float me out of my regular channel. She spent the night packing hertrousseau, and in the morning she went away. Now, I could get a divorce andsave all this trouble of getting her signature, but I'd rather not tellthis whole business in court, for the little woman seems to be trying todo better, and if it wasn't for her blamed old hyena of a mother, wouldget along tip-top. She's living with her mother now and if a lawyer wouldgo to the girl and tell her how it is, and that I want to sell theproperty and want her signature, in place of getting a divorce, I believeshe'd sign. Would you mind trying it?"

[Illustration: "COAXING. "]

I said if I could get time I would go over and talk with her and see whatshe said. So I did. I got along pretty well, too. I found the young womanat home, and told her the legal aspects of the case. She wouldn't admitany of the charges, but after a long parley agreed to execute the deed andsave trouble. She came to my office an hour later, and signed theinstrument I got two witnesses to the signature and had just put thenotarial seal on it when the girl's mother came in. She asked her daughterif she had signed the deed and was told that she had. She said nothing, but smiled in a way that made my blood run cold. If a woman were to smileon me that way every day, I should certainly commit some great crime. 

I was just congratulating myself on the success of the business, and waslooking at the two $20 gold pieces and trying to get acquainted with them, as it were, after the two women had gone away; when they returned with thehusband and son-in-law at the head of the procession. He looked pale andcareworn to me. He asked me in a low voice if I had a deed there, executedby his wife. I said yes. He then asked me if I would kindly destroy it. Isaid I would. I would make deeds and tear them up all day at $40 apiece. Isaid I liked the conveyancing business very much, and if a client feltlike having a grand, warranty deed debauch, I was there to furnish the rawmaterial. 

I then tore up the deed and the two women went quietly away. After theyhad gone, my client, in an absent-minded way, took out a large quid thathad outlived its usefulness, laid it tenderly on the open page of Estey'sPleadings, and said:

"You doubtless think I am a singular organization, and that my ways arepast finding out. I wish to ask you if I did right a moment ago?" Here hetook out another $20 and put it under the paper weight. "When I went downstairs I met my mother-in-law. She always looked to me like a firm woman, but I did not think she was so unswerving as she really was. She asked mein a low, musical voice to please destroy the deed, and then she took oneof them Smith & Wesson automatic advance agents of death out from underher apron and kind of wheedled me into saying I would. Now, did I doright? I want a candid, legal opinion, and I'm ready to pay for it. "

I said he did perfectly right. 

Answering an Invitation. 

Hudson, Wis. , January 19, 1886. 

Dear friend. --I have just received your kind and cordial invitation tocome to Washington and spend several weeks there among the eminent men ofour proud land. I would be glad to go as you suggest, but I cannot do soat this time. I am passionately fond of mingling with the giddy whirl ofgood society. I hope you will not feel that my reason for declining yourkind invitation is that I feel myself above good society. I assure you Ido not. 

Nothing pleases me better than to dress up and mingle among my fellow-men, with a sprinkling here and there of the other sex. It is true that themost profitable study for mankind is man, but we should not overlookwoman. Woman is now seeking to be emancipated. Let us put our great, strong arms around her and emancipate her. Even if we cannot emancipatebut one, we shall not have lived entirely for naught. 

I am told by those upon whom I can rely that there are hundreds ofattractive young women throughout our joyous land who have arrived atyears of discretion and yet who have never been emancipated. I met a womanon the cars last week who is lecturing on this subject, and she told meall about it. Now, the question at once presents itself, how shall weemancipate woman unless we go where she is? We must go right into societyand take her by the hand and never let go of her hand till she is properlyemancipated. Not only must she be emancipated, but she must be emancipatedfrom her present thralldom. Thralldom of this kind is liable to break outin any community, and those who are now in perfect health may pine away ina short time and flicker. 

My course, while mingling in society's mad whirl, is to first open theconversation with a young lady by leading her away to the conservatory, where I ask her if she has ever been the victim of thralldom and whetheror not she has ever been ground under the heel of the tyrant man. I thentime her pulse for thirty minutes, so as to strike a good average. Theemancipation of woman is destined at some day to become one of our leadingindustries. 

You also ask me to kindly lead the German while there. I would cheerfullydo so, but owing to the wobbly eccentricity of my cyclone leg, it would besort of a broken German. But I could sit near by and watch the game with afurtive glance, and fan the young ladies between the acts, and conversewith them in low, earnest, passionate tones. I like to converse withpeople in whom I take an interest. I was conversing with a young lady oneevening at a recherche ball in my far away home in the free and unfetteredWest, a very brilliant affair, I remember, under the auspices of HoseCompany No. 2, I was talking in a loud and earnest way to this liquid-eyedcreature, a little louder than usual, because the music was rather fortejust then, and the base viol virtuoso was bearing on rather hard at thatmoment. The music ceased with a sudden snort. And so did my wife, who wasjust waltzing past us. If I had ceased to converse at the same time thatthe music shut off, all might have been well, but I did not. 

Your remark that the president and cabinet would be glad to see me thiswinter is ill-timed. 

There have been times when it would have given me much pleasure to visitWashington, but I did not vote for Mr. Cleveland, to tell the truth, and Iknow that if I were to go to the White House and visit even for a fewdays, he would reproach me and throw it up to me. It is true I did notpledge myself to vote for him, but still I would hate to go to a man'shouse and eat his popcorn and use his smoking tobacco after I had votedagainst him and talked about him as I have about Cleveland. 

No, I can't be a hypocrite. I am right out, open and above board. If Italk about a man behind his back, I won't go and gorge myself with hisvictuals. I was assured by parties in whom I felt perfect confidence thatMr. Cleveland was a "moral leper, " and relying on such assurances from menin whom I felt that I could trust, and not being at that time where Icould ask Mr. Cleveland in person whether he was or was not a moral leperas aforesaid, I assisted in spreading the report that he had been exposedto moral leprosy, and as near as I could learn, he was liable to come downwith it at any time. 

So that even if I go to Washington I shall put up at a hotel and pay mybills just as any other American citizen would. I know how it is with Mr. Cleveland at this time. When the legislature is in session there, peoplecome in from around Buffalo with their butter and eggs to sell, and stayovernight with the president. But they should not ride a free horse todeath. I may not be well educated, but I am high strung till you can'trest Groceries are just as high in Washington as they are in Philadelphia. 

I hope that you will not glean from the foregoing that I have lost myinterest in national affairs. God forbid. Though not in the politicalarena myself, my sympathies are with those who are. I am willing to assistthe families of those who are in the political arena trying to obtain aprecarious livelihood thereby. I was once an official under the Federalgovernment myself, as the curious student of national affairs may learn ifhe will go to the Treasury Department at Washington, D. C. , and ask to seemy voucher for $9. 85, covering salary as United States commissioner forthe Second Judicial District of Wyoming for the year 1882. It was at thattime that a vile contemporary characterized me as "a corrupt and venalFederal official who had fattened upon the hard-wrung taxes of my fellowcitizens and gorged myself for years at the public crib. " This was unjustI was not corrupt I was not venal. I was only hungry!

Street Cars and Curiosities. 

There is an institution in Boston which the Pilgrim Fathers did notoriginate. That is the street car. There is a street car parade all dayon Washington street, and a red-light procession most of the night. 

People told me that I could get into a car and go anywhere I wanted to. Itried it. There was a point in Boston, I learned, where there were somemore relics that I hadn't seen. Parties told me where I could find somemore fragments of the Mayflower, and an old chair in which Josiah Quincyhad sat down to think. There were also a few more low price flint-lockguns and tomahawks that no man who visited Boston could afford to miss. Besides, there was said to be the lock that used to be on the door of aroom in which General Washington had a good notion to write his farewelladdress. All these things were in the collection which I started out tofind, and there were others, also. 

For instance, there was a specimen of the lightning that Franklin caughtin his demijohn out of the sky, and still in a good state of preservation;also some more clothes in which he was baptized, more swords of BunkerHill, and a little shirt which John Hancock put on as soon as he was born. Hancock was a perfect gentleman from his birth, and it is said that thefirst thing he did was to excuse himself for a moment and then put on thisshirt. His manners were certainly very agreeable, and he was very muchpolished. 

I heard, too, that there was an acorn from the tree in which BenedictArnold had his nest while he was hatching treason. I did not believe it, but I had an idea I could readily discover the fraud if I could only seethe acorn, for I am a great historian and researcher from away back. I wastold that in this collection there was a suspender button shed by PatrickHenry during his memorable speech in which he raised up to his full heighton his hind feet and permitted the war to come in _italics_, also in SMALLCAPS and in LARGE CAPS!!! with three astonishers on the end. 

So I wanted to find this place, and as I had plenty of means I decided toride in a street car. Therefore, I aimed my panic price cane at the driverof a cream-colored car with a blue stomach, and remarked, "Hi, there!"Before I go any further, and in order to avoid ambiguity, let me say thatit was the car that had the blue stomach. He (the driver) twisted thebrake and I went inside, clear to the further end, and sat down by theside of a young woman who filled the whole car with sunshine. I was sohappy that I gave the conductor half a dollar and told him to keep thechange. If by chance she sees this, I hope she still remembers me. Prettysoon a very fat woman came into the car and aimed for our quarter. Sheevidently intended to squat between this fair girl and myself. But ah, thought I to myself in a low tone of voice, I will fool thee. So I shovedmy person along in the seat toward the sweet girl of the Bay State. Thecorpulent party, whose name I did not learn, had in the meantime backed upto where she had detected a slight vacancy, and where I had seen fit toplace myself. At that moment she heaved a sigh of relief, and, assisted bythe motion of the car, which just then turned a corner, she sat down in mylap and nestled in my bosom like a tired baby elephant. 

[Illustration: PATRICK HENRY. ]

Dear reader, if I were to tell you that the crystal of my watch was pickedout from under my shoulder blades the next day, you would not believe it, would you? I will not strain your faith in me by making the statement, butthat was the heaviest woman I ever held. 

While all this was going on I lost track of my location. The car began tosquirm around all over Boston, and finally the conductor came back andwanted more money. I said no, I would get off and try a dark red car witha green stomach for a while. So I did I rode on that till I had seen agreat deal of new scenery, and then I asked the conductor if he passedNumber Clankety Clank, Blank street. He said he did not, but if I would godown two blocks further and take a maroon car with a plaid stomach itwould take me to the corner of "What-do-you-call-it and What's-his-namestreets, " where, if I took a seal brown car with squshed huckleberrytrimmings it would take me to where I wanted to go. So I tried it. I donot know just where I missed my train, but when I found the seal brown carwith scrunched huckleberry trimmings it was going the other way, and as itwas late I went into a cafe and refreshed myself. When I came out Idiscovered that it was too late to see the collection, even if I couldfind it, for at 6 o'clock they take the relics in and put them into arefrigerator till morning. 

[Illustration: TAKING A PRIZE. ]

I was now weary and somewhat disappointed, so I desired to get back to myheadquarters, wherein I could rest and where I could lock myself up in myroom, so no prize fat woman could enter. I hailed one of those sawed-offlandaus, consisting of two wheels, one door behind, and a bill for twobits. I told the college graduate on the box where I wanted to go, gavehim a quarter and got in. I sat down and heaved a chaste sigh. The sighwas only half hove when the herdic backed up to my destination, which wasabout 300 feet from where I got in, as the crow flies. 

When I go to Boston again, I am going in charge of the police. 

The street railway system of Boston is remarkably perfect. Fifty cars passa given point on Washington street in an hour, and yet there are noblockades. You can take one of those cars, if you are a stranger, and youcan get so mixed up that you will never get back, and all for five cents. I felt a good deal like the man who was full and who stepped on a man whowas not full. The sober man was mad, and yelled out: "See here; condemnit, can't you look where you're walking?" "Betcher life, " says theinebriate, "but trouble is to walk where I'm lookin'. "

The Poor Blind Pig. 

I have just been over to the Falls of Minnehaha. In fact I have been quitea tourist and summer resorter this season, having saturated my system withnineteen different styles of mineral water in Wisconsin alone, and triedto win the attention of nineteen different styles of head waiters at thesesummer hotels. I may add in passing that the summer hotels of Wisconsinand Minnesota have been crowded full the past season and more room willhave to be added before another season comes around. 

The motto of the summer hotel seems to be, "Unless ye shall have feed thewaiter, behold ye shall in no wise be fed. " Many waiters at these places, by a judicious system of blackmail and starvation, have reduced the guestto a sad state. 

[Illustration: THE MAN WHO FEES THE WAITEE. ]

The mineral water of Wisconsin ranks high as a beverage. Many persons areusing it during the entire summer in place of rum. 

The water of Waukesha does not appear to taste of any mineral, although ananalysis shows the presence of several kinds of groceries in solution. Thewater at Palmyra Springs also tastes like any other pure water, but atKankanna, on the Fox River, they have a style of mineral water which isdifferent. Almost as soon as you taste it you discover that it isextremely different. Colonel Watrous, of the Milwaukee _Sunday Telegraph_, took some of it. I saw him afterward. He looked depressed, and told methat he had been deceived. Several Kankanna people had told him that thiswas living water, He had discovered otherwise. He hated to place hisconfidence in people and then find it misplaced. 

A favorite style of Kankanna revenge is to drink a quart of this water, and then, on meeting an enemy, to breathe on him and wither him. Onebreath produces syncope and blind staggers. Two breaths induce coma andmetallic casket for one. 

Minnehaha is not mineral water. It is just plain water, giving itself awayday after day like a fresh young man in society. If you want pure wateryou get it at the spring near the foot of the fall, and if you want itflavored, with something that will leave a blazed road the whole length ofyour alimentary canal, you go to the "blind pig, " a few rods away from thefalls. 

The blind pig draws many people toward the falls through sympathy. To beblind must indeed be a sad plight. Let us pause and reflect on thisproposition. 

By good fortune I have had a chance to watch the rum problem in all itsphases this summer. Beginning in Maine, where the most ingenious methodsof whipping the devil around the stump are adopted, then going throughnorthern Iowa and tasting her exhilarating pop, and at last paying tencents to see the blind pig at Minnehaha, I feel like one who has wrestledwith the temperance problem in a practical way, and I have about decidedthat a high license is about the only way to make the sale of whiskyodious. Prohibition is too abrupt in its methods, and one generation canhardly wipe out the appetite for liquor that has been planted and fosteredby fifty preceding generations. 

For fear that a few of my lady readers do not know what the Minnehahablind pig looks like, and that they may be curious about it, I will justsay that it is a method of evading the law, and consists of a dumb waiter, wherein, if you pay ten cents, you get a glass of stimulants without theannoyance of conversation. Many ladies who visit the falls, and who haveheard incidentally about the blind pig, express a desire to see the poorlittle thing, but their husbands generally persuade them to refrain. 

Minnehaha is a beautiful waterfall. It is not so frightfully large andgrand as Niagara, but it is very fine, and if the State of Minnesota wouldcatch the man who nails his signs on the trees around there, and choke himto death near the falls on a pleasant day, a large audience wold attendwith much pleasure, I believe that the fence-board advertiser is not only, as a rule, wicked, but he also lacks common sense. Who ever bought a liverpad or a corset because he read about it on a high board fence? No one. Who ever purchased a certain kind of pill or poultice because the name ofthat pill or poultice was nailed on a tree to disfigure a beautifullandscape? I do not believe that any sane human being ever did so. Ifeveryone feels as I do about it, people would rather starve to death forpills and freeze to death in a perfect wilderness of liver pads than buyof the man who daubs the fair face of nature with names of his allegedgoods. 

I saw a squaw who seemed to belong in the picture of the poetic littlewaterfall. I did not learn her name. It was one of these long, corduroySioux names, that hang together with hyphens like a lot of sausage. Thesalaried humorist of the party said he never sausage a name before. 

Translated into our tongue it meantThe-swift-daughter-of-the-prairie-blizzard-that-gathers-the-huckleberry-on-the-run-and-don't-you-forget-it. 

Daniel Webster. 

I presume that Daniel Webster was as good an off-hand speaker as thiscountry has ever produced. Massachusetts has been well represented inCongress since that time, but she has had few who could successfullycompete with D. Webster, Esq. , attorney and counsellor-at-law, Boston, Mass. 

I have never met Mr. Webster, but I have seen a cane that he used to wear, and since that time I have felt a great interest in him. It was a heavywinter cane, and was presented to him as a token of respect. 

This reminds me of the inscription on a grave stone in the 280-year-oldchurchyard at LaPointe, on Lake Superior, where I was last week. It showswhat punctuation has done for a lost and undone race. I copy theinscription exactly as it appears:

[Illustration:LOUIS ROC DE DEAU SHOT ----AS A MARK OF ESTEEM BY HIS BROTHER]

Daniel Webster had one of the largest and most robust brains that everflourished in our fair land. It was what we frequently call a teemingbrain, one of those four-horse teeming brains, as it were. Mr. Websterwore the largest hat of any man then in Congress, and other senators andrepresentatives used to frequently borrow it to wear on the 2nd ofJanuary, the 5th of July, and after other special occasions, when they hadbeen in executive session most all night and endured great mental strain. This hat matter reminds me of an incident in the life of Benjamin F. Butler, a man well known in Massachusetts even at the present time. 

One evening, at a kind of reception or some such dissipation as that, while Jim Nye was in the Senate, the latter left his silk hat on thelounge with the opening turned up, and while he was talking with someoneelse, Mr. Butler sat down in the hat with so much expression that it was awreck. Everyone expected to see James W. Nye walk up and smite Benjamin F. Butler, but he did not do so. He looked at the chaotic hat for a minute, more in sorrow than in anger, and then he said:

"Benjamin, I could have told you that hat wouldn't fit you before youtried it on. "

Daniel Webster's brain was not only very large, but it was in good orderall the time. Sometimes Nature bestows large brains on men who do not riseto great prominence. Large brains do not always indicate greatintellectual power. These brains are large but of an inferior quality. Aschoolmate of mine used to wear a hat that I could put my head and bothfeet into with perfect ease. I remember that he tied my shirt one daywhile I was laying my well-rounded limbs in the mill pond near mychildhood's home. 

I was mad at the time, but I could not lick him, for he was too large. AllI could do was to patiently untie my shirt while my teeth chattered, thenfling a large, three-cornered taunt in his teeth and run. He kept onpoking fun at me, I remember, till I got dressed, and alludedincidentally, to my small brain and abnormal feet. This stung my sensitivenature, and I told him that if I had such a wealth of brain as he had, andit was of no use to think with, I would take it to a restaurant and haveit breaded. Then I went away. 

But we were speaking of Webster. Many lawyers of our day would do well toread and study the illustrious example of Daniel Webster. He did not sitin court all day with his feet on the table and howl, "We object, " andthen down his client for $50, just because he had made a noise. I employeda lawyer once to bring suit for me to recover quite a sum of money due me. After years of assessments and toilsome litigation, we got a judgment. Hesaid to me that he was anxious to succeed with the case mainly because heknew I Wanted to vindicate myself. I said yes, that was the idea exactly. I wanted to be vindicated. 

So he gave me the vindication and took the judgment as a slighttestimonial of his own sterling worth. When I want to be vindicated againI will do it with one of those self-cocking vindicators that you can carryin a pocket. 

Looking over this letter, I am amazed to see the amount of valuableinformation relative to the life of Mr. Webster that I have succeeded inusing. There are, of course, some minor details of Mr. Webster's lifewhich I have omitted, but nothing of real importance. The true history ofMr. Webster is epitomized here, and told in a pleasing and gracefulmanner, a style that is at once accurate and just and still elegant, chaste and thoroughly refined, while at the same time there are littlegobs of sly humor in it that are real cute. 

[Illustration]

Two Ways of Telling It. 

I remember one sunny day in summer, we were sitting in the Boomerangoffice, I and the city editor, and he was speaking enviously of my salaryof $150 per month as compared with his of $80, and I had just given himthe venerable minstrel witticism that of course my salary was much largerthan his, but he ought not to forget that he got his. 

Just then there was a revolver shot at the foot of our stairs, and thenanother. The printers rushed into the stairway from the composing room, and to save time I ran out on the balcony that hung over the sidewalk andwhich gave me a bird's-eye view of the murder. The next issue of the papercontained an account about like this:

Cold-Blooded Murder. --Yesterday, between 12 and 1 o'clock, in front ofthis office on Second street, James McKeon, in a manner almost whollyunprovoked, shot James Smith, commonly known as Windy Smith. Smith died at2 o'clock this morning of his wounds. Windy Smith was not a bad man, but, as his nickname would imply, he was a kind of noisy, harmless fellow, andMcKeon, who is a gambler and professional bad man, can give no good reasonfor the killing. There is a determined effort on foot to lynch themurderer. 

This account was brief, but it seemed to set forth the facts prettyclearly, I thought, and I felt considerably chagrined when I saw anaccount of the matter latter on, as written up by the prosecutingattorney. I may be inaccurate as to dates and some other points of detail, but, as nearly as I can remember, his version of the matter was like this:

THE TERRITORY OF WYOMING, } COUNTY OF ALBANY. } ss. 

In Justice's Court, before E. W. Nye, Esq. , Justice of the Peace. 

The Territory of Wyoming, plt'ff. } vs. } Complaint. James McKeon, def't. }

The above named defendant, James McKeon, is accused of the crime ofmurder, for that he, the said defendant, James McKeon, at the town ofLaramie City, in the County of Albany and Territory of Wyoming, and on the13th day of July, Anno Domini 1880, then and there being, he, the saiddefendant, James McKeon, did wilfully, maliciously, feloniously, wickedly, unlawfully, criminally, illegally, unjustly, premeditatedly, coolly andmurderously, by means of a certain deadly weapon commonly called a Smith &Wesson revolver, or revolving pistol, so constructed as to revolve uponitself and to be discharged by means of a spring and hammer, and with sixchambers thereto, and known commonly as a self-cocker, the same loadedwith gun-powder and leaden bullets, and in the hands of him, the saiddefendant, James McKeon, level at, to, upon, by, contiguous to and againstthe body of one James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, in the peace ofthe commonwealth then and there being, and that by means of said deadlyweapon commonly called a Smith & Wesson revolver, or revolving pistol, soconstructed as to revolve upon itself and to be discharged by means of aspring or hammer, and with six chambers thereto and known commonly as aself-cocker, the same loaded with gunpowder and leaden bullets and in thehands of him the said defendant, James McKeon, held at, to, upon, by, contiguous to and against the body of him, the said James Smith, commonlycalled Windy Smith, he, the said James McKeon, did wilfully, maliciously, feloniously, wickedly, fraudulently, virulently, unlawfully, criminally, illegally, brutally, unjustly, premeditatedly, coolly and murderously, ofhis malice aforethought with the deadly weapon aforesaid held in the righthand of him, the said defendant, James McKeon, to, at, against, etc. , thebody of him, the said James Smith, commonly called Windy Smith, he, thesaid defendant, James McKeon, at the said town of Laramie City, in thesaid County of Albany, and in the heretofore enumerated Territory ofWyoming, and on the hereinbefore mentioned 13th day of July, Anno Domini1880, did inflict to, at, upon, by, contiguous to, adjacent to, adjoining, over and against the body of him, the said James Smith, commonly calledWindy Smith, one certain deadly, mortal, dangerous and painful wound, to-wit: Over, against, to, at, by, upon, contiguous to, near, adjacent toand bisecting the intestines of him, the said James Smith, commonly calledWindy Smith, by reason of which he, the said James Smith, commonly calledWindy Smith, did in great agony linger, and lingering did die, on the 14thday of July, Anno Domini 1880, at 2 o'clock in the forenoon of said day, contrary to the statutes in such case made and provided, and against thepeace and dignity of the Territory of Wyoming. 

I am now convinced that although the published account was correct, it wasnot as full as it might have been. Perhaps the tendency of modernjournalism is to epitomize too much. In the hurry of daily newspaper workand the press of matter upon our pages, very likely we are fatally brief, and sacrifice rhetorical beauty to naked and goose-pimply facts. 

All About Menials. 

The subject of meals, lunch-counters, dining-cars and buffet-cars came upthe other day, incidentally. I had ordered a little breakfast in thebuffet-car, not so much because I expected to get anything, but because Iliked to eat in a car and have all the other passengers glaring at me. Ido not know which affords me the most pleasure--to sit for a photographand be stabbed in the cerebellum with a cast-iron prong, to be fed in thepresence of a mixed company of strangers, or to be called on without anypreparation to make a farewell speech on the gallows. 

However, I got my breakfast after awhile. The waiter was certainly themost worthless, trifling, half-asleep combination of Senegambian stupidityand poor white trash indolence and awkwardness that I ever saw. He broughtin everything except what I wanted, and then wound up by upsetting thelittle cream pitcher in my lap. He did not charge for the cream. He threwthat in. 

So all the rest of the journey I was trying to eradicate a cream dado frommy pantaloons. It made me mad, because those pantaloons were made for meby request Besides, I haven't got pantaloons to squander in that way. Tosome a pair of pantaloons, more or less, is nothing, but it is much to me. 

[Illustration: SHOWING HIS INMOST THOUGHT. ]

There was a porter on the same train who was much the same kind offurniture as the waiter. He slept days and made up berths all night. Truly, he began making up berths at Jersey City, and when he got through, about daylight, it was time to begin to unmake them again. All night longI could hear him opening and shutting the berths like a concertina. Hesang softly to himself all night long:

 "You must camp a little in the wilderness And then we'll all go home. "

He played his own accompaniment on the berths. 

When in repose he was generally asleep with a whisk broom in one hand andthe other hand extended with the palm up, waiting for a dividend to bedeclared. 

He generally slept with his mouth open, so that you could read his inmostthoughts, and when I complained to him about the way my bunk felt, he saidhe was sorry, and wanted to know which cell I was in. 

I rode, years ago, over a new stage line for several days. It was throughan almost trackless wilderness, and the service hadn't been "expedited"then. It was not a star route, anyhow. The government seemed to think thatthe man who managed the thing ought not to expect help so long as he hadbeen such a fool asterisk it. 

(Five minutes intermission for those who wish to be chloroformed. )

The stage consisted of a buckboard. It was one of the first buckboardsever made, and the horse was among the first turned out, also. The driverand myself were the passengers. 

When it got to be about dinner time, I asked him if we were not prettynear the dinner station. He grunted. He hadn't said a word since westarted. He was a surly, morose and taciturn man. I was told that he hadbeen disappointed in love. A half-breed woman named No-Wayno had led himto believe that she loved him, and that if it had not been for her husbandshe would gladly have been the driver's bride. So the driver assassinatedthe disagreeable husband of No-Wayno. Then he went to the ranch to claimhis bride, but she was not there. She had changed her mind, and married acattle man, who had just moved on to the range with a government mule anda branding iron, intending to slowly work himself into the stock business. 

So this driver was a melancholy man. He only made one remark to me duringthat long forty-mile drive through the wilderness. About dinner time hedrove the horse under a quaking asp tree, tied a nose bag of oats over itshead and took a wad of bread and bacon from his greasy pocket. The baconand bread had little flakes of smoking tobacco all over it, because hecarried his grub and tobacco in the same pocket. For a moment heintroduced one corner of the bacon and bread in among his whiskers. Thenhe made the only remark that he uttered while we were together. He said:

"Pardner, dinner is now ready in the dining-car. "

A Powerful Speech. 

I once knew a man who was nominated by his fellow citizens for a certainoffice and finally elected without having expended a cent for thatpurpose. He was very eccentric, but he made a good officer. When he heardthat he was nominated, he went up, as he said, into the mountains to dosome assessment work on a couple of claims. He got lost and didn't get hisbearings until a day or two after election. Then he came into town hungry, greasy and ragged, but unpledged. 

He found that he was elected, and in answer to a telegram started off for'Frisco to see a dying relative. He did not get back till the first ofJanuary. Then he filed his bond and sailed into the office. He firedseveral sedentary deputies who had been in the place twenty years justbecause they were good "workers. " That is, they were good workers at thepolls. They saved all their energies for the campaign, and so they onlyhad vitality enough left to draw their salaries during the balance of thetwo years. 

This man raised the county scrip from sixty to ninety-five in less thantwo years, and still they busted him in the next convention. He was tooeccentric. One delegate asked what in Sam Hill would become of the countryif every candidate should skin out during the campaign and rusticate inthe mountains while the battle was being fought. 

Says he, "I am a delegate from the precinct of Rawhide Buttes, and Icalklate I know what I am talkin' about. Gentlemen of the convention, justsuppose that everybody, from the President of the United States down, wasto git the nomination and then light out like a house afire and never comeback till it was time to file his bond; what's going to become of uscommon drunkards to whom election is a noasis in the bad lands, an orangegrove in the alkali flats?

"Mr. Chairman, there's millions of dollars in this broad land waiting forthe high tide of election day to come and float 'em down to where you andI, Mr. Chairman, as well as other parched and patriotic inebriates, cangit a hold of 'em. 

"Gentlemen, we talk about stringency and shrinkage of values, and all suchfunny business as that; but that's something I don't know a blamed thingabout. What I can grapple with is this: If our county offices are worth$30, 000, and there are other little after-claps and soft snaps, andwalk-overs, worth, say $10, 000, and the boys, say, are willing to do thefair thing, say, blow in fifteen per cent, to the central committee, andwhat they feel like on the outside, then politics, instead of a burden anda reproach, becomes a pleasing duty, a joyous occasion and a picnic tothose whose lives might otherwise be a dreary monotone. 

"Mr. Chairman, the past two years has wrecked four campaign saloons, and atinner who socked his wife's fortune into campaign torches is now in aland where torchlights is no good. Overcome by a dull market, a financialdepression and a reserved central committee, he ate a package of Rough onRats, and passed up the flume. He is now at rest over yonder. 

"Such instances would be common if we encouraged the eccentric economy ofofficial cranks. It is an evil that is gnawing at the vitals of therepublic. We must squench it or get left. There are millions of dollars inthis country, Mr. Chairman, that, if we keep it out of the campaign, willget into the hands of the working classes, and then you and I, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the convention, can starve to death. Keep thecampaign money away from the soulless hired man, gentlemen, or good-byeJohn. 

"Mr. Chairman, excuse my emotion! It is almighty seldom that I make aspeech, but when I do, I strive to get there with both feet. We musteither work the campaign funds into their legitimate channels, or everyblamed patriot within the sound of my voice will have to fasten on a tinbill and rustle for angle-worms amongst the hens. You hear me?"

[Terrific applause, during which the delicate odor of enthusiasm wasnoticed on the breath of the entire delegation. ]

A Goat in a Frame. 

Laramie has a seal brown goat, with iron gray chin whiskers and a breathlike new mown hay. 

He has not had as hard a winter as the majority of stock on the Rockymountains, because he is of a domestic turn of mind and tries to make manhis friend. Though social in his nature, he never intrudes himself onpeople after they have intimated with a shotgun that they are weary ofhim. 

When the world seems cold and dark to him, and everybody turns coldly awayfrom him, he does not steal away by himself and die of corroding grief; hejust lies down on the sidewalk in the sun and fills the air with theseductive fragrance of which he is the sole proprietor. 

One day, just as he had eaten his midday meal of boot heels and coldsliced atmosphere and kerosene barrel staves, he saw a man going along thestreet with a large looking glass under his arm. 

The goat watched the man, and saw him set the mirror down by a gate and goinside the house after some more things that he was moving. Then the goatstammered with his tail a few times and went up to see if he could eat themirror. 

When he got pretty close to it, he saw a hungry-looking goat apparentlycoming toward him, so he backed off a few yards and went for him. Therewas a loud crash, and when the man came out he saw a full length portraitof a goat with a heavy, black walnut frame around it, going down thestreet with a great deal of apparent relish. 

Then the man said something derogatory about the goat, and seemed offendedabout something. 

Goats are not timid in their nature and are easily domesticated. 

There are two kinds of goat--the cashmere goat and the plain goat. Theformer is worked up into cashmere shawls and cashmere bouquet. The latteris not. 

The cashmere bouquet of commerce is not made of the common goat. It is agood thing that it is not. 

A goat that has always been treated with uniform kindness and neverbetrayed, may be taught to eat out of the hand. Also out of the flourbarrel or the ice-cream freezer. 

To a Married Man. 

Adelbert G. Grimes writes as follows: "I am a young man not yet twenty-twoyears of age. I am said to be rather attractive in appearance and a fluentconversationalist. Three years ago I very foolishly married and settled ona tree claim in Dakota, where we have three children, consisting of onepair of twins and an ordinary child, born by itself. We are a considerabledistance from town, and to remain at home during the winter with nocompany besides my wife and children is very irksome, especially as mywife has never had the advantages that I have in the way of society. Herconversational powers are very inferior, and I cannot bear to remain athome very much. So I go to town, where I can meet my equals and enjoymyself. 

"I fear that this will lead to an estrangement, for, when I return atnight, my wife's nose is so red from sniveling all day that I can hardlybear to look at her. If there is anything in this world that I hate, it isa red-eyed, red-nosed woman who sheds tears on all occasions. 

"Of course all this makes me irritable, and I say sharp things to her, asI have a wonderful command of language at such times. She surely cannotexpect a young man twenty-two years old to stay at home day after day andlisten to squalling children, when he is still in the heyday of life withjoy beaming in his eye. 

"Of course I do say things to my wife that I am afterward sorry for, but Imade a great mistake in marrying the woman I did, and although some of mylady friends told me so at the time, I did not then believe it. Do youthink I ought to bury myself on a tree claim with a woman far my inferior, while I have talents that would shine in the best of society? I am greatlydistressed, and would willingly seek a legal separation if I knew how togo about it. Will you kindly advise me? What do you think of mypenmanship?"

I hardly know how to advise you, Adelbert. You have got yourself into aplace where you cannot do much but remain and take your medicine. Unfortunately, there are too many such young men as you are, Adelbert. You are young, and handsome, and smart. You casually admit this in yourletter, I see. You have a social nature, and would shine in society. Youalso reluctantly confess this. That does not help you in my estimation, Adelbert. If you are a bright and shining light in society, you areprobably a brunette fizzle as a husband. When you resolved to take a treeclaim and make a home in Dakota, why didn't you put your swallow-tailcoat under the bed and retire from the giddy whirl and mad rush ofsociety, the way your wife had to?

I dislike very much to speak to you in a plain, blunt way, Adelbert, being a total stranger to you, but when you convey the idea in yourletter that you have made a great mistake in marrying at the age ofnineteen, and marrying far beneath yourself, I am forced to agree withyou. If, instead of marrying a young girl who didn't know any betterthan to believe that you were a man, instead of a fractional one, youhad come to me, and borrowed my revolver and blown out the fungusgrowth which you refer to as your brains, you would have bit it. Evennow it is not too late. Yon can still come to me, and I will obligeyou. You cannot do your wife a greater favor at this time than to leaveher a widow, and the sooner you do so the less orphans there will be. 

[Illustration: "I HAVE A WONDERFUL COMMAND OF LANGUAGE. "]

Did it ever occur to you, Adelbert, that your wife made a mistake also?Did it ever bore itself through your adamantine skull that it is not anunbroken round of gayety for a young girl to shut herself up in a lonesomehouse for three years, gradually acquiring children, and meantime being"sassed" by her husband because she is not a fluent conversationalist?

Wherein you offend me, Adelbert, is that you persist in breathing the airwhich human beings and other domestic animals more worthy than yourselfare entitled to. There are too many such imitation men at large. Thereshould be a law that would prohibit your getting up and walking on yourhind legs and thus imposing on other mammals. If I could run thegovernment for a few weeks, Adelbert, I would compel your style ofzoological wonder to climb a tree and stay there. 

So you married a woman who was far your inferior, did you? How did you doit? Where did you go to find a woman who could be your inferior and stillkeep out of the menagerie? Adelbert, I fear you do your wife a greatinjustice. With just barely enough vitality to hand your name down toposterity and blast the fair future of Dakota by leaving your trade-markon future generations, you snivel and whine over your blasted life! Ifyour life had been blasted a little harder twenty years ago, the life ofyour miserable little wife would have been less blasted. 

If you had acquired a little more croup twenty years ago, Dakota wouldhave been ahead. Why did you go on year after year, permitting people tobelieve you were a man, when you could have undeceived them in two minutesby crawling into a hollow log and remaining there?

Your penmanship is very good. It is better than your chances for a brightimmortality beyond the grave. Write to me again whenever you feel lonesomeor want advice. I was a young married man myself once, and I know whatthey have to endure. Up to the time of my marriage, I had never known aharsher tone than a flute note; my early life ran quiet as the clear brookby which I sported, and so on. I was a great belle in society, also. Iattended all the swell balls and parties in our county for years. Whereveryou found fair women and brave men tripping the light bombastic toe, youwould also find me. "Sometimes I played second violin, and sometimes Icalled off. "

To an Embryo Poet. 

The following correspondence is now given to the press for the first time, with the consent of the parties:

Wm. Nye, Esq. --_Dear Sir_-I am a young man, 20 years of age, with faireducation and a strong desire to succeed. I have done some writing for thepress, having written up a very nice article on progressive euchre, whichwas a great success and published in our home paper, But it was not copiedso much in other papers as I would like to have saw it, and I take my penin hand at this time to write and ask you what there is in the articleenclosed that prevents its being copied abroad all over our broad land. Iwrite just as I hope you would feel perfectly free to write me at anytime. I think that writers ought to aid each other. Yours with kindregards, Algernon L. Tewey. 

P. O. Box 202. 

I have carefully read and pondered over the dissertation on progressiveeuchre which you send me, Algernon, and I cannot see why it should not beravenously seized and copied by the press of the broad, wide land referredto in your letters. If you have time, perhaps it would be well enough togo to the leading journalists of our country and ask them what they meanby it. You might write till your vertebrae fell out of your clothes on thefloor, and it would not do half so much good as a personal conference withthe editors of America. First prepare your article, then go personally tothe editors of the country and call them one by one out into the hall, ina current of cold air, and explain the article to them. In that way youwill form pleasant acquaintances and get solid with our leadingjournalists. You have no idea, Algernon, how lonely and desolate the lifeof a practical journalist is. Your fresh young face and your fresh youngways, and your charming grammatical improvisations, would delight aneditor who has nothing to do from year to year but attend to his business. 

Do not try to win the editors of America by writing poems beginning:

 Now the merry goatlet jumps, And the trifling yaller dog, With the tin can madly humps Like an acrobatic frog. 

At times you will be tempted to write such stuff as this, and mark it witha large blue pencil and send it to the papers of the country, but that isnot a good way to do. 

Seriously, Algernon, I would suggest that you make a bold dash for successby writing things that other people are not writing, thinking things thatother people are not thinking, and saying things that other people are notsaying. You will say that this advice is easier to give than to take, andI agree with you. But the tendency of the age is to wear the same style ofcollar and coat and hat that every other man wears, and to talk and writelike other men; and to be frank with you, Algernon, I think it is aninfernal shame. If you will look carefully about you, you will see thatthe preacher, who is talking mostly to dusty pew cushions, is also thepreacher who is thinking the thoughts of other men. He is "up-ending" hisbarrel of sermons annually, and they were made in the first place from thesermons of a man who also "up-ended" his barrel annually. Go where thepreacher is talking to full houses, and you will discover that his sermonsare full of humanity and originality. They are not written in a library bya man with interchangeable ideas, an automatic cog-wheel thinker, but theyare prepared by a man who earnestly and honestly studies the great, achingheart of humanity, and full of sincerity, originality and old-fashionedChristianity, appeals to your better impulses. 

How is it with our poetry? As a fellow-traveler and sea-sick touristacross life's tempestuous tide, I ask you, Algernon, who is writing thepoetry that will live? Is it the man who is sawing out and sandpaperingstanzas of the same general dimensions as some other poet, in which hebewails the fact that he loved a tall, well-behaved, accomplished girl, sixteen hands high, who did not require his love?

Ah, no! He is not the poet whose terra cotta statue will stand in thecemetery, wearing a laurel wreath and a lumpy brow. Show me the poet whois intimate with nature and who studies the little joys and sorrows of thepoor; who smells the clover and writes about live, healthy people withideas and appetites. He is my poet. 

I apologize for speaking so earnestly, Algernon, but I saw by your letterthat you felt kindly toward me, and rather invited an expression ofopinion on my part. So I have written more freely, perhaps, than Iotherwise would. We are both writers. Measurably so, at least. You writeon progressive euchre, and I write on anything that I can get hold of. Solet us agree here and promise each other that, whatever we do, we will notthink through the thinker of another man. 

The Great Ruler of the universe has made and placed upon the earth a goodmany millions of men, but He never made any two of them exactly alike. Wemay differ from every one of the countless millions who have preceded us, and still be safe. Even you and I, Algernon, may agree in many matters, and yet be very dissimilar. At least I hope so, and I presume you do also. 

Eccentricities of Genius. 

Alfonso Quanturnernit Dowdell, Frumenti, Ohio, writes to know somethingof the effects of alcohol on the brain of an adult, being evidentlyapprehensive that some day he may become an adult himself He says:

"I would be glad to know whether or not you think that liquor stimulatesthe brain to do better literary work. I have been studying the personalhistory of Edgar A. Poe, and learned through that medium that he was inthe habit of drinking a good deal of liquor at times. I also read thatGeorge D. Prentice, who wrote 'The Closing Year, ' and other nice poems, was a hearty drinker. Will you tell me whether this is all true or not, and also what the effect of alcohol is on the brain of an adult?"

It is said on good authority that Edgar A. Poe ever and anon imbibed thepopular beverages of his day and age, some of which contained alcohol. Weare led to believe these statements because they remain as yet undenied. But Poe did a great deal of good in that way, for he set an example thathas been followed ever since, more or less, by quite a number of poets'apprentices who emulated Poe's great gift as a drinker. These men, thinking that poesy and delirium tremens went hand in hand, became fluentdrunkards early in their career, so that finally, instead of issuing asmall blue volume of poems they punctuated a drunkard's grave. 

So we see that Poe did a great work aside from what he wrote. He opened upa way for these men which eradicated them, and made life more desirablefor those who remained. He made it easy for those who thought genius andinebriation were synonymous terms to get to the hospital early in the day, while the overworked waste-basket might secure a few hours of much neededrest. 

George D. Prentice has also done much toward weeding out a class of peoplewho otherwise might have become disagreeable. It is better that these menwho write under the influence of rum should fall into the hands of thepolice as early as possible. The police can handle them better than theeditor can. 

Do not try, Alfonso, to experiment in this way. Because Mr. Poe and Mr. Prentice could write beautiful and witty things between drinks, do not, ohdo not imagine that you can begin that way and succeed at last. 

The effect of alcohol on the brain of an adult is to congest it finally. Alcohol will sometimes congest the brain of an adult under the most tryingand discouraging circumstances. I have frequently known it to scorch outand paralyze the brain in cases where other experiments had not beensuccessful in showing the presence of a brain at all. 

[Illustration: THINKING ABOUT THE POEM. ]

That is the reason why some people love to fool with this great chemical. It revives their suspicions regarding the presence of a brain. 

The habits of literary men vary a good deal, for no two of them seem tocare to adopt the same plan. 

I have taken the liberty of showing here my own laboratory and methods ofthought. This is from a drawing made by myself, and represents the writerin his study and in the act of thinking about a poem. 

Last summer I wrote a large poem entitled, "_Moanings of the Moist, Malarious Sea. _" I have it still. The back of it has a memoranda on it inblue pencil from the leading editors of our broad land, but otherwise itis just as I wrote it. 

The engraving represents me in the act of thinking about the poem, andwhat I will do with the money when I get it. 

I am now preparing a poem entitled, "_The Umbrella_. " It is a daintylittle bit of verse, and my hired man thinks it is a gem. I called it "TheUmbrella" so that it would not be returned. 

By looking at the drawing you will see the rapid change of expression onthe face as the work goes on. 

I give the drawing in order also, to show the rich furniture of the room. All poets do not revel in such gaudy trappings as I do, but I cannot writewell in a bare and ill-furnished room. In these apartments there is also awindow which does not show in the engraving. I have tried over and overagain to write a poem in a room that had no window in it, but I cannot saythat I ever wrote one under such circumstances that I thought would live. 

You can do as you think best about furnishing your room as I have mine. You might, of course, succeed as well by writing in a plainer apartment, but I could not. All my poetical work that was done in the cramped andplainly furnished room that I formerly occupied over Knadler's liverystable, was ephemeral. 

It got into a few of the leading autograph albums of the country, but itnever got into the papers. 

I would not use alcohol, however. Poe and Prentice could use it, but Inever could. After a long debauch, I could always work well enough on thestreet but I could not do literary work.