Some of the silver dollars rolled off on the floor, and he had to put some in his coat pockets, but he got them all, and looked around at the congregation with a smile and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a bandanna handkerchief and winked, as much as to say, "The first man that speaks disrespectfully of a traveling man in my presence will get thumped, and don't you forget it."

The minister rose up in the pulpit, looked at the wealth on the table, and read the hymn, "A charge to keep I have," and the congregation joined, the travelers swelling the glad anthem as though they belonged to a Pinafore chorus. They all bowed their heads while the minister, with one eye on the dollars, pronounced the benediction, and the services were over.

The traveling men filed out through the smiles of the ladies and went to the hotel, while half the congregation went forward to the anxious seat, to "view the remains." It is safe to say that it will be unsafe, in the future, to speak disparagingly of traveling men in Green Bay, as long as the memory of that blockade Sunday remains green with the good people there.

ANNA DICKINSON.

Anna Dickinson is going upon the stage again and is to play male characters, such as "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Claude Melnotte." We have insisted for years that Anna Dickinson was a man, and we dare anybody to prove to the contrary. There is one way to settle this matter, and that is when she plays Hamlet. Let the stage manager put a large spider in the skull of Yorick, and when Hamlet takes up the skull and says, "Alas, poor Yorick, I was pretty solid with him," let the spider crawl out of one of the eye holes onto Hamlet's hand, and proceed to walk up Miss Dickinson's sleeve. If Hamlet simply shakes the spider off, and goes on with the funeral unconcerned, then Miss Dickinson is a man. But if Hamlet screams bloody murder, throws the skull at the grave digger, falls over into the grave, tears his shirt, jumps out of the grave and shakes his imaginary skirts, gathers them up in his hands and begins to climb up the scenes like a Samantha cat chased by a dog, and gets on top of the first fly and raises Hamlet's back and spits, then Miss Dickinson is a woman. The country will watch eagerly for the result of this test, which we trust will be made at the Boston Theatre next week.

EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF A DOUGHNUT.

"'Twas midnight's holy hour, and silence was brooding like a gentle spirit o'er the still and pulseless world." Not a sound was heard, except Robert's dog baying at a sorrel haired young man and a muchmussed girl, who were returning home from a suburban picnic. As they passed out of hearing, and the dog was peacefully cannibalizing on a link of sausage that had been condemned by the board of health, owing to a piece of brass padlock that showed through the silky nickel plating made of fiddling string material, a soft cry of a child was heard in an upper room of a mansion owned by a prosperous business man. The head of the house heard it and sat up in bed to still the small voice, but couldn't, when the mother of the child said that she had forgotten to bring up anything for the child to eat in the night, and she must go down cellar and get a doughnut. The man said he could never stay there and enjoy himself in bed and think of his wife, groping around in the dark below stairs after it. After telling him that he would probably come up with a pickle, ehe let him go. Carefully he got out of bed, in an angelic frame of mind and a night shirt, and barefooted he prepared to make the descent. As he stopped to hold one foot in his hand, the instep of which had struck the rocker of the baby crib, she told him the doughnuts were in the third crock in the pantry on the floor. He said it was one evidence of a clear headed man, that he could walk all over his own house in the dark. At the head of the first pair of stairs he tripped on a baby cart and the tongue flew up and struck him on the knee, but by hanging to the bannisters he saved himself. At the foot of the stairs he tumbled over a block house and broke off a toe nail. He said it was a mean man that wouldn't sacrifice a few toe nails for his little baby, and he laughed. He fell over a dining room chair, and sat down in another, and when he got up he felt that though he was not proud, he was stuck up, for on his night shirt was a sticky fly paper that had been placed in readiness to catch the unwary early fly. After peeling off the sticky paper, and subterraneously swearing a neat, delicate little female swear, he groped to the cellar door, and began to go down.



Now, if there is anything a boy ought to be punished for, it is for surreptitiously eating a large slice of musk melon and leaving the rind on the top stair. It tends to make a boy disliked. The head of the family stepped with his bare feet on the piece of melon, and sat down so quick that it made his head swim. It made him swim all over, and under, and everywhere. But if he sat down soon, he got up sooner. If there is one thing that a house cat should be taught, it is to sleep elsewhere than on the top stair. When he fell and struck the sleeping cat there was a crisis. He took in the situation at once. An occasional disengaged feline toe nail, and a squall, told him in burning words that, while his title to the seat was contested, it would be impolitic to wait for a commission of unbiased judges to decide which was entitled to it. His opponent was armed, and had possession, and he felt that it would tend to prevent riot and bloodshed if he quietly gave up. But he felt that while in his present position the cat was comparatively harmless, if he attempted to rise she would bring the whole army and navy into action, and perhaps cripple his resources. So he decided to jump up in a hurry before the cat had time to think of her toe nails much. His position was not pleasant, to say the least, but he jumped up in a hurry, hoping the cat would remain and continue her nap. She was not a remaining cat and as soon as his weight was removed from her person, she gave a yell as though frightened, and began to walk up and down his legs, inside of his night shirt. The question as to how many toe nails a cat has got, has never been decided, but he says they have a million, and he can show the documents to prove it. She went up him as though he was a fence post, and a dog after her, and he flew around as though his linen was on fire, and yelled until his wife came down to see what was the matter. By unbuttoning the top button the cat was coaxed out, under protest however, and after a light was lit there was seen about the maddest man in the world. He took a candle and went down after the doughnuts, and after running his hand into a jar of preserved peaches, and another of pickled pig's feet, he struck the right one, and after hot grease from the candle had run down his fingers he came up with a doughnut, and then the baby wouldn't eat it, then he sat down side-ways in a cushioned chair, applied arnica and swore till daylight. A single shot was heard in the cellar that morning, and the young life of that cat went out. As he rode down on the street car the next morning, people marvelled that he should stand up on the back platform, when there were so many vacant seats, and when a neighbor asked him to be seated he said, with a yawn, "No thank you, I have been sitting down a good deal during the night," and he looked mad. It is such things that drive men to commit crimes.

TAKE YOUR LATIN STRAIGHT.

The school board, at its last session adopted the following rule: "The continental system of pronounciation shall be taught in the high schools of La Crosse, and no other allowed except by direction of board of education." We are glad the rule has been adopted, as there is no doubt that the continental system is the best. We have been pained beyond measure, as no doubt all of the school board have, at hearing the scholars pronounce Latin by 'tother system. No longer ago than last Saturday, when we were in Mons. Anderson's, a girl came in and asked for a pair of Latin corsets, by the Onalaska system of pronounciation. The clerk, not understanding, went and got a pair of those undershirts and drawers, complete in one number, with no tale to be continued. The girl blushed, the clerk did not understand, and we had to explain by the continental system, and the girl got her corsets, but suppose there had not been a Latin scholar standing around there waiting for his wife to buy a package of safty pins, what a predicament the girl would have been in. On behalf of the people, THE SUN thanks the board of education for adopting the continental system of pronounciation, only they ought to go further, and make it a crime punishable with suicide for anybody to pronounce it in any other way. There has been suffering enough by pronouncing it the old way.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HE IS TOO HEALTHY.

"There, I knew you would get into trouble," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as a policeman came along leading him by the ear, the boy having an empty champagne bottle in one hand, and a black eye. "What has he been doing Mr. Policeman?" asked the grocery man, as the policeman halted with the boy in front of the store.

"Well, I was going by a house up here when this kid opened the door with a quart bottle of champagne, and he cut the wire and fired the cork at another boy, and the champagne went all over the sidewalk, and some of it went on me, and I knew there was something wrong, cause champagne is too expensive to waste that way, and he said he was running the shebang and if I would bring him here you would say he was all right. If you say so I will let him go."

The grocery man said he had better let the boy go, as his parents would not like to have their little pet locked up. So the policeman let go his ear, and he throwed the empty bottle at a coal wagon, and after the policeman had brushed the champagne off his coat, and smelled of his fingers, and started off, the grocery man turned to the boy, who was peeling a cucumber, and said:

"Now, what kind of a circus have you been having, and what do you mean by destroying wine that way! and, where are your folks?"

"Well, I'll tell you. Ma she has got the hay fever and has gone to Lake Superior to see if she can't stop sneezing, and Saturday Pa said he and me would go out to Oconomowoc and stay over Sunday, and try and recuperate our health. Pa said it would be a good joke for me not to call him Pa, but to act as though I was his younger brother, and we would have a real nice time. I knowed what he wanted. He is an old masher, that's what's the matter with him, and he was going to play himself for a batchelor. O, thunder, I got on to his racket in a minute. He was introduced to some of the girls and Saturday evening he danced till the cows came home. At home he is awful fraid of rheumatiz, and he never sweats, or sits in a draft; but the water just poured off'n him, and he stood in the door and let a girl fan him till I was afraid he would freeze, and just as he was telling a girl from Tennessee, who was joking him about being 'a nold batch,' that he was not sure as he could always hold out a woman hater if he was to be thrown into contact with the charming ladies of the Sunny South. I pulled his coat and said, 'Pa how do you spose Ma's hay fever is to-night, I'll bet she is just sneezing the top of her head off.' Wall, sir, you just oughten seen that girl and Pa. Pa looked at me as if I was a total stranger, and told the porter if that freckled faced boot-black belonged around the house he had better be fired out of the ball room, and the girl said 'the disgustin' thing!' and just before they fired me I told Pa he had better look out or he would sweat through his liver pad.

"I went to bed and Pa staid up till the lights were put out. He was mad when he came to bed, but he didn't kick me, cause the people in the next room would hear him, but the next morning he talked to me. He said I might go back home Sunday night, and he would stay a day or two. He sat around on the veranda all the afternoon, talking with the girls, and when he would see me coming along he would look cross. He took a girl out boat riding, and when I asked him if I couldn't go along, he said he was afraid I would get drowned, and he said if I went home there was nothing there too good for me, and so my chum and me got to firing bottles of champagne, and he hit me in the eye with a cork, and I drove him out doors and was just going to shell his earth works, when the policeman collared me. Say, what's good for a black eye?"

The grocery man told him his Pa would cure it when he got home. "What do you think your Pa's object was in passing himself off for a single man at Oconomowoc?" asked the grocery man, as he charged up the cucumber to the boy's father.

"That's what beats me. Aside from Ma's hay fever she is one of the healthiest women in this town. O, I suppose he does it for his health, the way they all do when they go to a summer resort, but it leaves a boy an orphan, don't it, to have such kitteny parents?"

SURE OF HEAVEN.

The only persons that are real sure that their calling and election is sure, and that they are going to heaven across lots, are the men who are hung for murder. They always announce that they have got a dead thing on it, just before the drop falls. How encouraging it must be to children to listen to the prayers of our ministers in churches, who admit that they are miserable sinners, living on God's charity, and doubtful if they would be allowed to sit at His right hand, and as they tell the story of their own unworthiness the tears trickle down their cheeks. Then let the children read an account of a hanging bee, and see how happy the condemned man is, how he shouts glory hallelujah, and confesses that, though he killed his man, he is going to heaven. A child will naturally ask, why don't the ministers murder somebody, and make a dead sure thing of it?

THE NAUGHTY BUT NICE CHURCH CHOIR.

You may organize a church choir and think you have got it down fine, and that every member of it is pious and full of true goodness, and in such a moment as you think not you will find that one or more of them are full of the old Harry, and it will break out when you least expect it. There is no more beautiful sight to the student of nature than a church choir. To see the members sitting together, demure, devoted and pious looking, you think that there is never a thought enters their mind that is not connected with singing anthems, but sometimes you get left.

There is one church choir in Milwaukee that is about as near perfect as a choir can be. It has been organized for a long time, and has never quarreled, and the congregation swears by it. When the choir strikes a devotional attitude it is enough to make an ordinary Christian think of the angel band above, only the male singers wear whiskers, and the females wear fashionable clothes.

You would not think that this choir played tricks on each other during the sermon, but sometimes they do. The choir is furnished with the numbers of the hymns that are to be sung, by the minister, and they put a bookmark in the book at the proper place. One morning they all got up to sing, when the soprano turned pale, as an ace of spades dropped out of her hymn book, the alto nearly fainted when the queen of hearts dropped at her feet, and the rest of the pack was distributed around in the other books. They laid it onto the tenor, but he swore, while the minister was preaching, that he didn't know one card from another.

One morning last summer, after the tenor had been playing tricks all spring on the rest of the choir, the soprano brought a chunk of shoemaker's wax to church. The tenor was arrayed like Solomon in all his glory, with white pants, and a Seymour coat. The tenor got up to see who the girl was that came in with the old lady, and while he was up the soprano put the shoemaker's wax on the chair, and the tenor sat down on it. They all saw it, and they waited for the result. It was an awful long prayer, and the church was hot, the tenor was no iceberg himself, and shoemaker's wax melts at ninety eight degrees Fahrenheit.



The minister finally got to the amen, and read a hymn, the choir then coughed and all rose up. The chair that the tenor sat in stuck to him like a brother, and came right along and nearly broke his suspenders.

It was the tenor to bat, and as the great organ struck up he pushed the chair, looked around to see if he had saved his pants, and began to sing, and the rest of the choir came near bursting. The tenor was called out on three strikes by the umpire, and the alto had to sail in, and while she was singing the tenor began to feel of first base to see what was the matter. When he got his hand on the shoemaker's warm wax his heart smote him, and he looked daggers at the soprano, but she put on a pious look and got her mouth ready to sing "Hold the Fort."

Well, the tenor sat down on a white handkerchief before he went home, and he got home without anybody seeing him, and he has been, as the old saying is, "laying" for the soprano ever since to get even.

It is customary in all first-class choirs for the male singers to furnish candy for the lady singers, and the other day the tenor went to a candy factory and had a peppermint lozenger made with about half a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper in the centre of it. On Christmas he took his lozenger to church and concluded to get even with the soprano if he died for it.

Candy had been passed around, and just before the hymn was given out in which the soprano was to sing a solo, "Nearer My God to Thee," the wicked wretch gave her the loaded lozenger. She put it in her mouth and nibbed off the edges, and was rolling it as a sweet morsel under her tongue, when the organ struck up and they all arose. While the choir was skirmishing on the first part of the verse and getting scored up for the solo, she chewed what was left of the candy and swallowed it.

Well, if a democratic torch-light procession had marched unbidden down her throat she couldn't have been any more astonished. She leaned over to pick up her handkerchief and spit the candy out, but there was enough pepper left around the selvage of her mouth to have pickled a peck of chow-chow. It was her turn to sing, and as she rose and took the book, her eyes filled with tears, her voice trembled, her face was as red as a spanked lobster, and the way she sung that old hymn was a caution. With a sweet tremulo she sung, "A Charge to Keep I Have," and the congregation was almost melted to tears.

As she stopped, while the organist got in a little work, she turned her head, opened her mouth and blew out her breath with a "whoosh," to cool her mouth. The audience saw her wipe a tear away, but did not hear the sound of her voice as she "whooshed." She wiped out some of the pepper with her handkerchief and sang the other verses with a good deal of fervor, and the choir sat down, all of the members looking at the soprano.

She called for water, the noble tenor went and got it for her, and after she had drank a couple of quarts, she whispered to him: "Young man, I will get even with you for that peppermint candy if I have to live a thousand years, and don't you forget it," and then they all sat down and looked pious, while the minister preached a most beautiful sermon on "Faith." We expect that tenor will be blowed through the roof some Sunday morning, and the congregation will wonder what he is in such a hurry for.

SUPREME COURT JUDGES AND U.S. SENATORS.

I would call your attention to a change that it seems to me should be made in the method of selecting U.S. Senators and Supreme Judges. Heretofore it has been noticeable that the men who carried the longest pole knocked down the senatorial persimmons. In the matter of the election of Judges of the Supreme Court, it has been the practice to secure men for those places at an enormous salary, when other men would be willing to do the work and board themselves. The suggestion I would make is that you pass a law letting the offices of United States Senator and Judges of the Supreme Court to the lowest bidder. This method will be economical and will secure to the state men who can legislate and judge things well enough for all practical purposes. The way times are now we must get things at panic prices or go without.

OUR CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS HAVE GONE.

It pains us to announce that the Young Men's Christian Association, which has had rooms on two sides of our office for more than a year, has moved away. We do not know why they moved, as we have tried to do everything it was possible to do for their comfort, and to cheer them in their lonely life. That their proximity to the Sun office has been beneficial to them we are assured, and the closeness has not done us any hurt as we know of.

Many times when something has happened that, had it happened in La Crosse, might have caused us to be semi-profane, instead of giving way to the fiery spirit within us, and whooping it up, we have thought of our neighbors who were truly good, and have turned the matter over to our business manager, who would do the subject justice or burst a flue.

When the young Christians have given a sociable, we have always put on a resigned and pious expression and gone amongst them about the time the good bald-headed brother brought up the pail full of coffee, and the cheerful sister cut the cake.

No one has been more punctual at these free feeds than we have, though we often noticed that we never got a fair divide of the cake that was left, when they were dividing it up to carry home for the poor. We have been as little annoyed by our neighbors as we could have been by anybody that might have occupied the rooms.

It is true that at times the singing of a church tune in there when we were writing a worldly editorial has caused us to get tangled, but the piety that we have smuggled into our readers through the church music will more than atone for the wrath we have felt at the discordant music, and we have hopes the good brothers will not be averse to saying a good word for us when they feel like it.

When we lent the young Christians our sanctum as a reception room for the ladies when they gave the winter picnic to the dry goods clerks, we did feel a little hurt at finding so many different kinds of hair pins on the carpet the next morning, and the different colors of long hair on our plush chairs and raw silk ottoman would have been a dead give away on any other occasion, but for this, even, we have forgiven the young Christians, though if we ever do so again, they have got to agree to comb the lounge and the chairs before we shall ever occupy the rooms again.

There is nothing that is so hard to explain as a long hair of another color, or hair pins and blue bows and pieces of switch. They are gone and we miss them. No more shall we hear the young Christian slip on the golden stairs and roll down with his boot heel pointing heavenward, while the wail of a soul in anguish comes over the banisters, and the brother puts his hand on his pistol pocket and goes out the front door muttering a silent prayer, with blood in his eyes.

No more will the young Christian faint by the wayside as he brings back our borrowed chairs and finds a bottle and six glasses on our centre table, when he has been importuning us to deliver a temperance speech in his lecture room. Never again shall we witness the look of agony on the face of the good brother when we refuse to give five dollars toward helping discharged criminals to get a soft thing, while poor people who never committed a crime and have never been supported by the State are amongst us feeling the pangs of hunger. No more shall we be compelled to watch the hard looking citizens who frequent the reading room of the association for fear they will enter our office in the still watches of the night and sleep on the carpet with their boots on.

They are all gone. They have crossed the beautiful river, and have camped near the Christian Statesman office, where all is pure and good except the houses over on Second street, beyond the livery stable, where they never will be molested if they do not go there.

Will they be treated any better in their new home than they have been with us? Will they have that confidence in their new neighbors that they have always seemed to have in us? Well, we hope they may be always happy, and continue to do good, and when they come to die and go to St. Peter's gate, if there is any backtalk, and they have any trouble about getting in, the good old doorkeeper is hereby assured that we will vouch for the true goodness and self-sacrificing devotion of the Milwaukee Young Men's Christian Association, and he is asked to pass them in and charge it up to the Sun.

BUTTERMILK BIBBERS.

The immense consumption of buttermilk as a drink, retailed over the bars of saloons, has caused temperance people to rejoice. It is said that over two thousand gallons a day are sold in Milwaukee. There is one thing about buttermilk, in its favor, and that is, it does not intoxicate, and it takes the place of liquor as a beverage. A man may drink a quart of buttermilk, and while he may feel like a calf that has been sucking, and want to stand in a fence corner and bleat, or kick up his heels and run around a pasture, he does not become intoxicated and throw a beer keg through a saloon window.

Another thing, buttermilk does not cause the nose to become red, and the consumer's breath does not smell like the next day after a sangerfest. The complexion of the nose of a buttermilk drinker assumes a pale hue which is enchanting, and while his breath may smell like a baby that has nursed too much and got sour, the smell does not debar his entrance to a temperance society.

FISHING FOR PIECES OF WOMEN.

There are lots of ludicrous scenes to be observed on the railroads and conductors are loaded with stories that would cause a marble monument to keep its sides a laughing. Some day we are going to borrow a conductor, and take him out in the woods, and place a revolver to his head and make him deliver a lot of stories. The other day as conductor Fred Underwood's train from Chicago, arrived on the trestle work on the south side, the whistle blew, the air break was touched off, and the train came up standing so quick that a woman lost her false teeth in the sleeper, and everybody's hair stood up like a mule's ears. Every window had a head out, and when the conductor got out on the platform he saw the engineer and fireman on the ends of the ties looking down into the mud and water, shading their eyes as though looking for the eclipse.

There, sticking out of the mud were two human legs, and as one leg had a piece of listing around it, just above the veal, the conductor knew, instinctively, that the surface indications showed that there was a woman in there. Then he thought that the engine had probably struck a female, and tore her all to pieces, and of course he knew that the company would expect him to bring home enough for a mess, or a funeral. Spitting on his hands he called a brakeman with a transom hook out of the sleeper, to fish with, they rolled up their trousers and waded in, after telling a porter to bring a blanket to put the pieces in. The brakeman got there first and took hold of one foot, when the conductor got hold of the brakeman's coat tail and pulled. The passengers turned away sick, expecting to see the mangled remains brought to the surface. They pulled, and directly the balance of the deceased came up. It was an Irish lady, with a tin pail, who had been on the way to take her husband's dinner to him, and she stood on one side to let the train pass, and had lost her balance and fallen into the mud. As her head came out of the mud, she squirted water out of her mouth, kicked the brakeman in the ear and said,

"Lave go of me, I am a dacent woman!"

The conductor asked her if she was hurt.

"Hurted is it," said she, "Ivery bone in my body is kilt intirely, and I have lost me tay cup," and she looked in her tin pail in distress.

After vainly trying to get the conductor to wade in and search for her "tay cup," she permitted them to assist her into the car, where an old doctor from Racine volunteered to examine her to see if she was mortally injured. He put his hand on her shoulder and asked her if she was in any pain.

"Divil the pain, except the loss of me tay cup," said she, "and kape yer owld hands off me, for I am a dacent woman."

She shook herself in the car and got mud all over everybody, and finally took her pail and jumped off at a crossing before arriving at the depot. As the train came into the depot ten minutes late, and the conductor jumped off, all mud from head to foot, as though he had been playing spaniel and retrieving a wounded duck, Supt. Atkins looked at his clothes and said, "Where in —— have you been all the time?" The conductor took a wisp of straw to wipe himself off, and as he threw it under a car he said he had been in the artificial propagation of the human race. In fact he had been engaged in the noble work of raising woman to a higher sphere. He was allowed to go on probation and wash himself. The brakeman went down there the next day and was fishing in the same hole. He said he didn't know but there might be more woman in there, but they say he was after the "tay cup."

NEARLY BROKE UP THE BALL.

A party of well meaning young people from Ripon nearly broke up a dance at Hazen's cheese factory, out in the country a spell ago. The people around there are quiet, sober country people, who confine themselves in dancing, to plain quadrilles and country dances, with an occasional monnie musk, or a plain waltz. These young Ripon people are on the dance bigger than a wolf, and they have learned all the Boston dips, and Saratoga bends, and Newport colic dances, and everything new. There is one dance they have learned which is peculiar to say the least. It is a species of waltz, but the couple get together so odd that a person who sees it for the first time just leans against something and fans himself. When the music strikes up a waltz the young man opens his arms and doubles himself up like a boy with the cholera infantum, his hind leg cramps and his head lops over on one side, and he looks sick, his back humps up like a case of chronic inflammatory rheumatism, and he is ready. The girl who is with him, when he begins to have spasms, at once seems to go into a trance. Her back gets up like a cat, she bends over towards him, her forward leg gets out of joint at the knee, her neck takes a cramp, her mouth opens and she lolls, her eyes roll like a steer that has turned the yoke, and just before she dies she falls into the arms of the deceased and they are ready. For a moment they stand and squirm like angle-worms on a hook, and froth at the mouth, and look, as they stand there, like a pile driver that has been run into by an engine. They teeter up and down a little, and then fly off on a tangent, and they flop around in unexpected places among the other dancers, jump like a box car, bump against other couples, and at every bump they are driven closer together, until they are so near that it does seem as though they will have to be pried apart with a handspike; they look into each other's eyes as though they would bite, and they keep going around till their backs are broke. Well, a party of these kind of dancers went to the cheese factory where the country people were gathered, and after dancing a few quadrilles, the fiddlers struck up an old fashioned waltz. While the visiting dancers were going into spasms to get ready to wade in, the floor filled with the country couples, who were waltzing around old fashioned, when all of a sudden those Ripon people began to work. They flopped across the cheese factory, knocked down a couple from Pickett's Corners, caromed on a fellow and his girl from Brandon and sent them against a barrel of lemonade, glanced across the hall and struck an old lady amidships that had just started to call her girl off the floor because she was afraid the girl would catch those Ripon cramps, knocked her under a bench, where she lay and called for her husband Isaiah, to come and pick her up in a basket. In less than two minutes all the other dancers hauled off, and stood on benches and looked at them. Some of the country girls hid their heads and said they wanted to go home. The visitors slid around the hall, caught each other on the fly, run the bases, and come under the wire neck and neck, just as the man who played second fiddle fell over the base viol in a dead faint, and the man that played the piccalo rolled under the music stand, striken with apoplexy. The manager of the dance called a constable who was present, and told him to arrest the party, and handcuff them and take them to the Oshkosh insane asylum, where they had escaped. The young men explained that they were not crazy, and that it was only a new kind of dance, and they were reluctantly allowed to remain, on condition that they "wouldn't cut up any more of them city monkey shines, not afore folks."

SUMMER RESORTING.

The other day a business man who has one of the nicest houses in the nicest ward in the city, and who has horses and carriages in plenty, and who usually looks as clean as though just out of a band box and as happy as a schoolma'am at a vacation picnic, got on a street car near the depot, a picture of a total wreck. He had on a long linen duster, the collar tucked down under the neck band of his shirt, which had no collar on, his cuffs were sticking out of his coat pocket, his eyes looked heavy, and where the dirt had come off with the perspiration he looked pale and he was cross as a bear.



A friend who was on the car, on the way up town, after a day's work, with a clean shirt on, a white vest and a general look of coolness, accosted the traveler as follows:

"Been summer resorting, I hear?"

The dirty-looking man crossed his legs with a painful effort, as though his drawers stuck to his legs and almost peeled the back off, and answered:

"Yes, I have been out two weeks. I have struck ten different hotels, and if you ever hear of my leaving town again during the hot weather, you can take my head for a soft thing," and he wiped a cinder out of his eye with what was once a clean handkerchief.

"Had a good, cool time, I suppose, and enjoyed yourself," said the man who had not been out of town.

"Cool time, hell," said the man, who has a pew in two churches, as he kicked his limp satchel of dirty clothes under the car seat. "I had rather been sentenced to the House of Correction for a month."

"Why, what's the trouble?"

"Well, there is no trouble, for people who like that kind of fun, but this lets me out. I do not blame people who live in Southern States for coming North, because they enjoy things as a luxury that we who live in Wisconsin have as a regular diet, but for a Chicago or Milwaukee man to go into the country to swelter and be kept awake nights is bald lunancy. Why, since I have been out I have slept in a room a size smaller than the closet my wife keeps her linen in, with one window that brought in air from a laundry, and I slept on a cot that shut up like a jack-knife and always caught me in the hinge where it hurt.

"At another hotel, I had a broken-handled pitcher of water that had been used to rinse clothes in, and I can show you the indigo on my neck. I had a piece of soap that smelled like a tannery, and if the towel was not a recent damp diaper than I have never raised six children.

"At one hotel I was the first man at the table, and two families came in and were waited on before the Senegambian would look at me, and after an hour and thirty minutes I got a chance to order some roast beef and baked potatoes, but the perspiring, thick-headed pirate brought me some boiled mutton and potatoes that looked as though they had been put in a wash-tub and mashed by treading on them barefooted. I paid twenty-five cents for a lemonade made of water and vinegar, with a piece of something on top that might be lemon peel, and it might be pumpkin rind.

"The only night's rest I got was one night when I slept in a car seat. At the hotel the regular guests were kept awake till 12 o'clock by number six headed boys and girls dancing until midnight to the music of a professional piano boxer, and then for two hours the young folks sat on the stairs and yelled and laughed, and after that the girls went to bed and talked two hours more, while the boys went and got drunk and sang 'Allegezan and Kalamazoo.'

"Why, at one place I was woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning by what I thought was a chariot race in the hall outside, but it was only a lot of young bloods rolling ten pins down by the rooms, using empty wine bottles for pins and China cuspidores for balls. I would have gone out and shot enough drunken galoots for a mess, only I was afraid a cuspidore would carom on my jaw. Talk about rest, I would rather go to a boiler factory.

"Say, I don't know as you would believe it, but at one place I sent some shirts and things to be washed, and they sent to my room a lot of female underclothes, and when I kicked about it to the landlord he said I would have to wear them, as they had no time to rectify mistakes. He said the season was short and they had to get in their work, and he charged me Fifth Avenue Hotel prices with a face that was child-like and bland, when he knew I had been wiping on diapers for two days in place of towels.

"But I must get off here and see if I can find water enough to bathe all over. I will see you down town after I bury these clothes."

And the sticky, cross man got off swearing at summer hotels and pirates. We don't see where he could have been traveling.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA JOKES HIM.

"What on earth is that you have got on your upper lip?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and began to peel a rutabaga, and his upper lip hung down over his teeth, and was covered with something that looked like shoemaker's wax, "You look as though you had been digging potatoes with your nose."

"O, that is some of Pa's darn smartness. I asked him if he knew anything that would make a boy's moustache grow, and he told me the best thing he ever tried was tar, and for me to rub it on thick when I went to bed, and wash it off in the morning. I put it on last night, and by gosh I can't wash it off. Pa told me all I had to do was to use a scouring brick, and it would come off, and I used the brick, and it took the skin off, and the tar is there yet, and say, does my lip look very bad?"

The grocery man told him it was the worst looking lip he ever saw, but he could cure it by rubbing a little cayenne pepper in the tar. He said the tar would neutralize the pepper, and the pepper would loosen the tar, and act as a cooling lotion to the lacerated lip. The boy went to a can of pepper behind the counter, and stuck his finger in and rubbed a lot of it on his lip, and then his hair began to raise, and he began to cry, and rushed to the water-pail and ran his face into the water to wash off the pepper. The grocery man laughed, and when the boy had got the pepper washed off, and had resumed his rutabaga, he said:

"That seals your fate. No man ever trifles with the feelings of the bold buccanner of the Spanish main, without living to rue it. I will lay for you, old man, and don't you forget it. Pa thought he was smart when he got me to put tar on my lip, to bring my moustache out, and to-day he lays on a bed of pain, and to-morrow your turn will come. You will regret that you did not get down on your knees and beg my pardon. You will be sorry that you did not prescribe cold cream for my bruised lip, instead of cayenne pepper. Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you gimlet-eyed seller of dog sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, you small potato three card monte sleight of hand rotten egg fiend, you villain that sells smoked sturgeon and dogfish for smoked halibut. The avenger is on your track."

"Look here, young man, don't you threaten me, or I will take you by the ear and walk you through green fields, and beside still waters to the front door and kick your pistol pocket clear around so you can wear it for a watch pocket in your vest. No boy can frighten me by crimus. But tell me, how did you get even with your Pa?"

"Well, give me a glass of cider and we will be friends and I will tell you. Thanks! Gosh, but that cider is made out of mouldy dried apples and sewer water," and he took a handful of layer raisins off the top of a box to take the taste out of his mouth, and while the grocer charged a peck of rutabagas, a gallon of cider and two pounds of raisins to the boy's Pa, the boy proceeded:

"You see, Pa likes a joke the best of anybody you ever saw, if it is on somebody else, but he kicks like a steer when it is on him. I asked him this morning if it wouldn't be a good joke to put some soft soap on the front step, so the letter-carrier would slip up and spill hisself, and Pa said it would be elegant. Pa is a Democrat, and he thinks that anything that will make it unpleasant for Republican office holders, is legitimate, and he encouraged me to paralyze the letter-carrier. The letter-carrier is as old a man as Pa, and I didn't want to humiliate him, but I just wanted Pa to give his consent, so he couldn't kick if he got caught in his own trap. You see? Well, this morning the minister and two of the deacons called on Pa, to have a talk with him about his actions in church, on two or three occasions, when he pulled out the pack of cards with his handkerchief, and played the music box, and they had a pretty hot time in the back parlor, and finally they settled it, and were going to sing a hymn, when Pa handed them a little hymn book, and the minister opened it and turned pale and said, 'what's this?' and they looked at it, and it was a book of Hoyle's games instead of a hymn book. Gosh, wasn't the minister mad! He had started to read a hymn and he quit after he had read two lines where it said, 'In a game of four-handed euchre, never trump your partner's ace, but rely on the ace to take the trick on suit.' Pa was trying to explain how the book came to be there, when the minister and the deacons started out, and then I poured the two quart tin pail full of soft soap on the front step. It was this white soap, just the color of the step, and when I got it spread I went down in the basement. The visitors came out and Pa was trying to explain to them, about Hoyle, when one of the deacons stepped on the soap and his feet flew up and he struck on his pants and slid down the steps. The minister said 'great heavens, deacon, are you hurt? let me assist you,' and he took two quick steps, and you have seen these fellows in a nigger show that kick each other head over heels and fall on their ears, and stand on their heads and turn around like a top. The minister's feet slipped and the next I saw he was standing on his head in his hat, and his legs were sort of wilted and fell limp by his side, and he fell over on his stomach. You talk about spreading the gospel in heathen lands. It is nothing to the way you can spread it with two quarts of soft soap. The minister didn't look pious a bit, when he was trying to catch the railing he looked as though he wanted to murder every man on earth, but it may be he was tired.

"Well, Pa he was paralyzed, and he and the other deacon rushed out to pick up the minister and the first old man, and when they struck the steps they went kiting. Pa's feet somehow slipped backwards, and he turned a summersault and struck full length on his back, and one heel was across the minister's neck, and he slid down the steps, and the other deacon fell all over the other three, and Pa swore at them, and it was the worst looking lot of pious people I ever saw. I think if the minister had been in the woods somewhere, where nobody could have heard him, he would have used language. They all seemed mad at each other. The hired girl told Ma there was three tramps out on the sidewalk fighting Pa, and Ma she took the broom and started to help Pa, and I tried to stop Ma, 'cause her constitution is not very strong and I didn't want her to do any flying trapeze business, but I couldn't stop her, and she went out with the broom and a towel tied around her head. Well, I don't know where Ma did strike, but when she came in she said she had palpitation of the heart, but that was not the place where she put the arnica. O, but she did go through the air like a bullet through cheese, and when she went down the steps a-bumpity-bump, I felt sorry for Ma. The minister had got so he could set up on the sidewalk, with his back against the lower step, when Ma came sliding down, and one of the heels of her gaiters hit the minister in the hair, and the other foot went right through between his arm and his side, and the broom liked to pushed his teeth down his throat. But he was not mad at Ma. As soon as he see it was Ma he said, 'Why, sister, the wicked stand in slippery places, don't they?' and Ma she was mad and said for him to let go her stocking, and then Pa was mad and he said, 'look-a-here you sky-pilot, this thing has gone far enough,' and then a policeman came along and first he thought they were all drunk, but he found they were respectable, and he got a chip and scraped the soap off of them, and they went home, and Pa and Ma they got in the house some way, and just then the letter-carrier came along, but he didn't have any letters for us, and he didn't come onto the steps, and then I went up stairs and I said, 'Pa, don't you think it is real mean, after you and I fixed the soap on the steps for the letter-carrier, he didn't come on the step at all,' and Pa was scraping the soap off his pants with a piece of shingle, and the hired girl was putting liniment on Ma, and heating it in for palpitation of the heart, and Pa said, 'You dam idjut, no more of this, or I'll maul the liver out of you,' and I asked him if he didn't think soft soap would help a moustache to grow, and he picked up Ma's work-basket and threw it at my head, as I went down stairs, and I came over here. Don't you think my Pa is unreasonable to get mad at a little joke that he planned himself?"

The grocery man said he didn't know, and the boy went out with a pair of skates over his shoulder, and the grocery man is wondering what joke the boy will play on him to get even for the cayenne pepper.

GATHERED WAISTS!

Andrews' Bazar says: "Gathered waists are very much worn." If the men would gather the waists carefully they would not be worn so much. Some men go to work gathering a waist just as they would go to work washing sheep, or raking and binding. They ought to gather as though it was eggs done up in a funnel-shaped brown paper at a grocery.

CHURCH KENO.

While the most of our traveling men, our commercial tourists, are nice Christian gentlemen, there is occasionally one that is as full of the old Nick as an egg at this time of year is full of malaria. There was one of them stopped at a country town a few nights ago where there was a church fair. He is a blonde, good-natured looking, serious talking chap, and having stopped at that town every month for a dozen years, everybody knows him. He always chips in towards a collection, a wake or a rooster fight, and the town swears by him.

He attended the fair and a jolly little sister of the church, a married lady, took him by the hand and led him through green fields, where the girls sold him ten-cent chances in saw dust dolls, and beside still waters, where a girl sold him sweetened water with a sour stomach, for lemonade, from Rebecca's well. The sister finally stood beside him while the deacon was reading off numbers. They were drawing a quilt, and as the numbers were drawn all were anxious to know who drew it. Finally, after several numbers were drawn it was announced by the deacon that number nineteen drew the quilt and the little sister turned to the traveling man and said, "My! that is my number. I have drawn it. What shall I do?" "Hold up your ticket and shout keno," said he.

The little deaconess did not stop to think that there might be guile lurking in the traveling man, but being full of joy at drawing the quilt, and ice cream because the traveling man bought it, she rushed into the crowd towards the deacon, holding her number, and shouted so they could hear it all over the house, "Keno!"



If a bank had burst in the building there couldn't have been so much astonishment. The deacon turned pale and looked at the poor little sister as though she had fallen from grace, and all the church people looked sadly at her, while the worldly minded people snickered. The little woman saw that she had got her foot into something, and she blushed and backed out, and asked the traveling man what "keno" meant. He said he didn't know exactly, but he had always seen people, when they won anything at that game, yell "keno." She isn't exactly clear yet what "keno" is, but she says she has sworn off taking advice from pious looking traveling men. They call her "Little Keno" now.

THE OLD SWEET SONGS.

A Boston girl sings: "What is home without a mother," while the old lady is mending her daughter's stockings. There is something sweet about those old songs.

FAILURE OF A SOLID INSTITUTION.

We are astonished to see that a Boston dealer in canned goods has failed. If there is one branch of business that ought to be solid it is that of canning fruits and things, for there must be the almightiest profit on it that there is on anything. It must be remembered that the stuff is canned when it is not salable in its natural state.

If the canners took tomatoes, for instance, when they first came around, at half a dollar for six, and canned them, there would be some excuse for charging twenty-five cents for a tin thing full, but they wait until the vines are so full of tomatoes that the producer will pay the cartage if you will haul them away, and then the tomatoes are dipped into hot water so the skin will drop off and they are chucked into cans that cost two cents each, and you pay two shillings for them, when you get hungry for tomatoes. The same way with peas, and peaches, and everything.

Did you ever try to eat canned peas? They are always old back numbers that are as hard and tasteless as chips, and are canned after they have been dried for seed. We bought a can of peas once for two shillings and couldn't crack them with a nut cracker. But they were not a dead loss, as we used them the next fall for buck shot. Actually, we shot a coon with a charge of those peas, and he came down and struck the water, and died of the cholera morbus the next day.

Talk of canned peaches; in the course of a brilliant career of forty years we have never seen only six cans of peaches that were worth the powder to blast them open. A man that will invent a can opener that will split open one of these pale, sickly, hard hearted canned peaches, that swim around in a pint of slippery elm juice in a tin can, has got a fortune. And they have got to canning pumpkin, and charging money for it.

Why, for a dollar, a canning firm can buy pumpkins enough to fill all the tin cans that they can make in a year, and yet they charge a fellow twenty cents for a can of pumpkin, and then the canning establishment fails. It must be that some raw pumpkin has soured on the hands of the Boston firm, or may be, and now we thing we are on the right track to ferret out the failure, it may be that the canning of Boston baked beans is what caused the stoppage.

We had read of Boston baked beans since school days, and had never seen any till four years ago, when we went to a picnic and bought a can to take along. We knew how baked beans ought to be cooked from years of experience, but supposed the Boston bean must hold over every other bean, so when the can was opened and we found that every bean was separate from every other bean, and seemed to be out on its own recognizance, and that they were as hard as a flint, we gave them to the children to play marbles with, and soured on Boston baked beans. Probably it was canning Boston beans that broke up the canning establishment.

REGISTRY OF ELECTORS.

The registry law has proved a conspicuous failure, inasmuch as it has taken ten years of persistent efforts by its use to make a change in the admistration. I would suggest that you amend the registry law by providing that all qualified voters have their ears punched, immediately after voting, by the inspectors of elections, the same as conductors punch tickets. This method will obviate the difficulties heretofore experienced, and check illegal voting and prevent repeating.

ABOUT HELL.

An item is going the rounds of the papers, to illustrate how large the sun is, and how hot it is, which asserts that if an icicle a million miles long, and a hundred thousand miles through, should be thrust into one of the burning cavities of the sun, it would be melted in the hundredth part of a second, and that it would not cause as much "sissing" as a drop of water on a hot griddle.

By this comparison we can realize that the sun is a big thing, and we can form some idea of what kind of a place it would be to pass the summer months. In contemplating the terrible heat of the sun, we are led to wonder why those whose duty it is to preach a hell, hereafter, have not argued that the sun is the place where sinners will go to when they die.

It is not our desire to inaugurate any reform in religious matters, but we realize what a discouraging thing it must be for preachers to preach hell and have nothing to show for it. As the business is now done, they are compelled to draw upon their imagination for a place of endless punishment, and a great many people, who would be frightened out of their boots if the minister could show them hell as he sees it, look upon his talk as a sort of dime novel romance.

They want something tangible on which they can base their belief, and while the ministers do everything in their power to encourage sinners by picturing to them the lake of fire and brimstone, where boat-riding is out of the question unless you paddle around in a cauldron kettle, it seems as though their labors would be lightened if they could point to the sun, on a hot day in August, and say to the wicked man that unless he gets down on his knees and says his "Now I lay me," and repents and is sprinkled, and chips in pretty flush towards the running expenses of the church, and stands his assessments like a thoroughbred, that he will wake up some morning, and find himself in the sun, blistered from Genesis to Revelations, thirsty as a harvest hand and not a brewery within a million miles, begging for a zinc ulster to cool his parched hind legs.

Such an argument, with an illustration right on the blackboard of the sky, in plain sight, would strike terror to the sinner, and he would want to come into the fold too quick. What the religion of this country wants, to make it take the cake, is a hell that the wayfaring man, though a Democrat or a Greenbacker, can see with the naked eye. The way it is now, the sinner, if he wants to find out anything about the hereafter, has to take it second handed, from some minister or deacon who has not seen it himself, but has got his idea of it from some other fellow who maybe dreamed it out.

Some deacon tells a sinner all about the orthodox hell, and the sinner does not know whether to believe him or not. The deacon may have lied to the sinner some time in a horse trade, or in selling him goods, and beat him, and how does he know but the same deacon is playing a brace game on him on the hereafter, or playing him for a sardine.

Now, if the people who advance these ideas of heaven or hell, had a license to point to the moon, the nice, cool moon, as heaven, which would be plausible, to say the least, and say that it was heaven, and prove it, and could prove that the sun was the other place, which looks reasonable, according to all we have heard about 'tother place, the moon would be so full there would not be standing room, and they would have to turn Republicans away, while the sun would be playing to empty benches, and there would only be a few editors there who got in on passes.

Of course, during a cold winter, when the thermometer was forty or fifty degrees below zero, and everybody was blocked in, and coal was up to seventeen dollars a ton, the cause of religion would not prosper as much as it would in summer, because when you talked to a sinner about leading a different life or he would go to the sun, he would look at his coal pile and say that he didn't care a continental how soon he got there, but these discouragements would not be any greater than some that the truly good people have to contend with now, and the average the year round would be largely in favor of going to the moon.

The moon is very popular now, even, and if it is properly advertised as a celestial paradise, where only good people could get their work in, and where the wicked could not enter on any terms, there would be a great desire to take the straight and narrow way to the moon, and the path to the wicked sun would be grown over with sand burs, and scorched with lava, and few would care to take passage by that route. Anyway, this thing is worth looking into.

PREPARING FOR WAR.

The Sun is no alarmist, but it can see in recent events what it believes to be a preparation for war. All of the manufactories of fire arms and cartridges are working night and day, and the Oneida community have just received an order to immediately can 24,000 cans of baked beans. When the war will break out we do not know, but all this fixed amunition is not being fixed for no 4th of July. It is trouble.

A TONY SLAUGHTER HOUSE.

A Milwaukee paper copies what THE SUN said about killing hogs while under the influence of chloroform, at Keine & Wilson's packing house, and intimates that it is all a lie. Have we lived to this age to have our word doubted by a Milwaukee editor? This is too much. Why, bless the dear man, the half has not been told. The firm we speak of is desirous of building up a trade for gilt edged pork and hams, so every improvement known to the trade is inaugurated. We did not think it necessary to describe the whole process, but now that our word is doubted, it is necessary to do so. When the late lamented hog is transferred from the parlor where he was chloroformed, his body is gently, yet firmly placed in a gold lined tank, filled with boiling Florida water and cologne, where the body remains until the bristles become loose, when it is transferred to a table covered with purple velvet, and the bristles are removed by the gentlemanly ushers, dressed in the fashions of the time of George III, armed with gold candle sticks, studded with diamonds. Then the body is taken by easy stages, into the presence of the intestine transporter, who reclines upon a downy couch. He raises up, brushes a particle of dust from his sleeve, and with a silver knife cuts the hog from Dan to Beersheba, and the patent insides are received on a silver salver, and divided among attendant maidens. The inside of the hog is washed with bay rum, and sweet majorum is put in. Then the hog is removed and cut up. The portions salted are salted for keeps, and the hams and bacon are smoked in a room filled with incense, and when the smoked meat comes out it is good enough for a king, or a queen, or a Milwaukee editor. Lie, indeed! We should like to see ourselves lying for one hog.

AN ARM THAT IS NOT RELIABLE.

A young fellow about nineteen, who is going with his first girl, and who lives on the West Side, has got the symptoms awfully. He just thinks of nothing else but his girl, and when he can be with her,—which is seldom, on account of the old folks.—he is there, and when he cannot be there, he is there or thereabouts, in his mind. He had been trying for three months to think of something to give his girl for a Christmas present, but he couldn't make up his mind what article would cause her to think of him the most, so the day before Christmas he unbosomed himself to his employer, and asked his advice as to the proper article to give. The old man is bald-headed and mean. "You want to give her something that will be a constant reminder of you?" "Yes," he said, "that was what was the matter." "Does she have any corns?" asked the old wretch. The boy said he had never inquired into the condition of her feet, and wanted to know what corns had to do with it. The old man said that if she had corns, a pair of shoes about two sizes too small would cause her mind to dwell on him a good deal. The boy said shoes wouldn't do. The old man hesitated a moment, scratched his head, and finally said:

"I have it! I suppose, sir, when you are alone with her, in the parlor, you put your arm around her waist; do you not, sir?"

The young man blushed, and said that was about the size of it.

"I presume she enjoys that part of the discourse, eh?"

The boy said that, as near as he could tell, by the way she acted, she was not opposed to being held up.

"Then, sir, I can tell you of an article that will make her think of you in that position all the time, from the moment she gets up in the morning till she retires."

"Is there any attachment to it that will make her dream of me all night?" asked the boy.

"No, sir! Don't be a hog," said the bad man.

"Then what is it?"

The old man said one word, "Corset!"

The young man was delighted, and he went to a store to buy a nice corset.

"What size do you want?" asked the girl who waited on him.

That was a puzzler. He didn't know they came in sizes. He was about to tell her to pick out the smallest size, when he happened to think of something.

"Take a tape measure and measure my arm; that will just fit."

The girl looked wise as though she had been there herself, found that it was a twenty-two inch corset the boy wanted, and he went home and wrote a note and sent it with the corset to the girl. He didn't hear anything about it till the following Sunday, when he called on her. She received him coldly, and handed him the corset, saying, with a tear in her eye, that she had never expected to be insulted by him. He told her he had no intention of insulting her; that he could think of nothing that would cause her to think of the gentle pressure of his arm around her waist but a corset, but if she felt insulted he would take his leave, give the corset to some poor family, and go drown himself.

He was about to go away, when she burst out crying, and sobbed out the following words, wet with salt brine.

"It was v-v-v-very thoughtful of y-y-you, but I couldn't feel it! It is f-f-four sizes too b-b-big! Why didn't you get number eight? You are silent, you cannot answer, enough?"



They instinctively found their way to the sofa; mutual explanation followed; he measured her waist again; saw where he had made a mistake by his fingers lapping over on the first turn, and he vowed, by the beard of the prophet, he would change it for another, if she had not worn it and got it soiled. They are better now.

THE BOY AND THE GOAT.

A man on King Street gave a boy a goat the other day, and he tied a rope around its neck to lead it home. The boy wanted to go through the gate, but as the goat concluded to jump over the fence and pull the boy through between the pickets, he let the goat have its own way. The boy got through the fence in instalments, leaving his shirt collar and one pants leg on the pickets, the goat dragged him out into the middle of the street, and then there occurred a sanguinary encounter to see whether the boy or the goat should boss the moving. At one time the spectators thought the goat would take the boy home. The animal used the boy for a cultivator, and they tore up the street like hands working on the road, till the goat slipped the rope over his head, and then the boy gathered himself up by the armful, and went and told his mother that he got his rope back anyway. She combed him with a piece of barrel.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA GETS MAD!

"I was down to the drug store this morning and saw your Ma buying a lot of court-plaster, enough to make a shirt I should think. What's she doing with so much court-plaster?" asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he came in and pulled off his boots by the stove and emptied out a lot of snow that had collected as he walked through a drift, which melted and made a bad smell.

"O, I guess she was going to patch Pa up so he will hold water. Pa's temper got him into the worst muss you ever see, last night. If that museum was here now they would hire Pa and exhibit him as the tattooed man. I tell you, I have got too old to be mauled as though I was a kid, and any man who attacks me from this out, wants to have his peace made with the insurance companies, and know that his calling and election is sure, because I am a bad man and don't you forget it." And the boy pulled on his boots and looked so cross and desperate that the grocer-man asked him if he wouldn't try a little new cider.

"Good heavens!" said the grocery man, as the boy swallowed the cider, and his face resumed its natural look, and the piratical frown disappeared with the cider. "You have not stabbed your father have you? I have feared that one thing would bring on another, with you, and that you would yet be hung."

"Naw, I haven't stabbed him. It was another cat that stabbed him. You see, Pa wants me to do all the work around the house. The other day he bought a load of kindling wood, and told me to carry it into the basement. I had not been educated up to kindling wood, and I didn't do it. When supper time came, and Pa found that I had not carried in the kindling wood, he had a hot box, and told me if that wood was not in when he came back from the lodge, that he would warm my jacket. Well, I tried to hire some one to carry it in, and got a man to promise to come in the morning and carry it in and take his pay in groceries, and I was going to buy the groceries here and have them charged to Pa. But that wouldn't help me out that night. I knew when Pa came home he would search for me. So I slept in the back hall on a cot. But I didn't want Pa to have all his trouble for nothing, so I borrowed an old torn cat that my chum's old maid aunt owns, and put the cat in my bed. I thought if Pa came into my room after me, and found that by his unkindness I had changed to a torn cat, he would be sorry. That is the biggest cat you ever see, and the worst fighter in our ward. It isn't afraid of anything, and can whip a New Foundland dog quicker than you could put sand in a barrel of sugar. Well, about eleven o'clock I heard Pa tumbing over the kindling wood, and I knew by the remark he made as the wood slid around under him, that there was going to be a cat fight real quick. He came up to Ma's room, and sounded Ma as to whether Hennery had retired to his virtuous couch. Pa is awful sarcastic when he tries to be. I could hear him take off his clothes, and hear him say, as he picked up a trunk strap, 'I guess I will go up to his room and watch the smile on his face, as he dreams of angels. I yearn to press him to my aching bosom.' I thought to myself, mebbe you won't yearn so much directly. He come up stairs, and I could hear him breathing hard. I looked around the corner and could see he just had on his shirt and pants, and his suspenders were hanging down, and his bald head shown like a calcium light just before it explodes. Pa went into my room, and up to the bed, and I could hear him say, 'Come out here and bring in that kindling wood or I will start a fire on your base burner with this strap.' And then there was a yowling such as I never heard before, and Pa said, 'Helen Blazes,' and the furniture in my room began to fall around and break. O, my! I think Pa took the torn cat right by the neck, the way he does me, and that left the cat's feet free to get in their work. By the way the cat squawled as though it was being choked I know Pa had him by the neck. I suppose the cat thought Pa was a whole flock of New Foundland dogs, and the cat had a record on dogs, and it kicked awful. Pa's shirt was no protection at all in a cat fight, and the cat just walked all around Pa's stomach, and Pa yelled 'police,' and 'fire,' and 'turn on the hose,' and he called Ma, and the cat yowled. If Pa had had presence of mind enough to have dropped the cat, or rolled it up in the mattrass, it would have been all right, but a man always gets rattled in time of danger, and he held on to the cat and started down stairs yelling murder, and he met Ma coming up.

"I guess Ma's night cap or something frightened the cat more, cause he stabbed Ma on the night-shirt with one hind foot, and Ma said 'mercy on us,' and she went back, and Pa stumbled on a hand-sled that was on the stairs, and they all fell down, and the cat got away and went down in the coal bin and yowled all night. Pa and Ma went into their room, and I guess they annointed themselves with vasaline, and Pond's extract, and I went and got into my bed, cause it was cold out in the hall, and the cat had warmed my bed as well as it had warmed Pa. It was all I could do to go to sleep, with Pa and Ma talking all night, and this morning I came down the back stairs, and haven't been to breakfast, cause I don't want to see Pa when he is vexed. You let the man that carries in the kindling wood have six shillings worth of groceries, and charge them to Pa. I have passed the kindling wood period in a boy's life, and have arrived at the coal period. I will carry in coal, but I draw the line at kindling wood."

"Well, you are a cruel, bad boy," said the grocery man, as he went to the book and charged the six shillings.

"O, I don't know. I think Pa is cruel. A man who will take a poor kitty by the neck, that hasn't done any harm, and tries to chastise the poor thing with a trunk strap, ought to be looked after by the humane society. And if it is cruel to take a cat by the neck, how much more cruel is it to take a boy by the neck, that had diphtheria only a few years ago, and whose throat is tender? Say, I guess I will accept your invitation to take breakfast with you," and the boy cut off a piece of bologna and helped himself to the crackers, and while the grocery man was out shoveling off the snow from the sidewalk, the boy filled his pockets with raisins and loaf sugar, and then went out to watch the man carry in his kindling wood.

SPURIOUS TRIPE.

Another thing that is being largely counterfeited is tripe. Parties who buy tripe cannot be too careful. There is a manufactory that can make tripe so natural that no person on earth can detect the deception. They take a large sheet of rubber about a sixteenth of an inch thick for a background, and by a process only known to themselves veneer it with a Turkish towel, and put it in brine to soak. The unsuspecting boarding house keeper, or restaurant man buys it and cooks it, and the boarder or transient guest calls for tripe. A piece is cut off the damnable tripe with a pair of shears used in a tin shop for cutting sheet iron, and it is handed to the victim. He tries to cut it, and fails; he tries to gnaw it off, and if he succeeds in getting a mouthful, that settles him. He leaves his tripe on his plate, and it is gathered up and sewed on the original piece, and is kept for another banquet.

"CASH."

On circus day W.H.H. Cash, the great railroad monopolist of New Lisbon, was in the city. He had just made a few hundred thousand dollars on a railroad contract, and he decided to expend large sums of money in buying dry goods. He went into one of our stores and was passing along up the floor, when a black-eyed girl with a dimple in her chin, pearly teeth, red pouting lips, who was behind the counter, shouted, "cash, here!" Mr. Cash turned to her, a smile illuminating his face as big as a horse collar. He is one of the most modest men in the world, and as he extended his great big horny hand to the girl, a blush covered his face, and the perspiration stood in great beads on his forehead. "How do yeu dew?" said Cash, as she seemed to shrink back in a frightened manner. They gazed at each other a moment, in astonishment, when another girl, perhaps a little better looking, further on, said, "Here, Cash, quick!" He at once made up his mind that she was the one that had spoken to him the first time, so he said, "Beg your pardon, miss," to the black-eyed girl, and went on to where the other girl was wrapping up a corset in a base ball undershirt. As he approached her she smiled, supposing he wanted to buy something. He thought she knew him, and he sat down on a stool and put out his hand and said, "How have you been?" She didn't seem to shake very much, but asked him if there was anything she could show him. He thought may be it was against the rules for the clerks to speak to anybody, unless they were buying something, so he said, "Yes, of course. Show me corsets, stockings, anything, gaul dumbed if I care what." She was just beginning to look upon him as though she thought he had escaped, when a little blonde on the other side of the store, as sweet as honey, shouted, "Cash, Cash, I need thee every hour. Come a running." To say that Cash was astonished, is drawing it mild. He knew that they all wanted him, but he couldn't make out how they seemed to know his name. He looked at the little blonde a minute, trying to think where he had met her, when he decided to go over and ask her. On the way over he thought she resembled a girl that used to live in Portage. He went up to her, and with a smile that was childlike and bland, he said, "Why, how are you, Samantha?" The little blonde looked daggers at him. "Didn't you use to wait on tables there at the Fox House, at Portage?" The girl picked up a roll of paper cambric, and was about to brain him, when the floor walker came along, and asked what was the matter. Cash explained that since he came into the store, three or four girls had yelled to him, and he couldn't place them. "There," says he, as another girl yelled "Cash," "there's another of 'em wants me," and he was going to where she was, when the floor walker asked him if his name was Cash. "You bet your liver it is," said Cash. It was then explained to him that the girls were calling cash boys. He thought it over a minute and said, "Sold, by the great baldheaded Elijah. Won't you go down and take something? Invite all of them. The girls can take soda. I'll be gaul blasted if I ever had such a rig played on me." And he went out into the glare of the sunlight, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, and just then the circus procession came along, and he followed off the elephants. There are lots of worse men than Cash.

TO WHAT VILE USES MAY WE COME.

A dispatch from Chicago, says that three men were shot on "a boat used for the vilest purposes." We never knew that the newspapers were printed on boats there in Chicago.

THE ADVENT PREACHER AND THE BALLOON.

There occasionally occurs an accident in this world that will make a person laugh though the laughing may border on the sacrilegious. For instance, there is not a Christian but will smile at the ignorance of the Advent preacher up in Jackson county who, when he saw the balloon of King, the balloonist, going through the air, thought it was the second coming of Christ, and got down on his knees and shouted to King, who was throwing out a sand bag, while his companion was opening a bottle of export beer, "O, Jesus, do not pass me by."



And yet it is wrong to laugh at the poor man, who took an advertising agent for a Chicago clothing store for the Savior, who he supposed was making his second farewell tour. The minister had been preaching the second coming of Christ until he looked for him every minute. He would have been as apt to think, living as he did in the back woods, that a fellow riding a bicycle, with his hair and legs parted in the middle, along the country road, was the object of his search.

We should pity the poor man for his ignorance, we who believe that when Christ does come he will come in the old-fashioned way, and not in a palace car, or straddle of the basket of a balloon. But we can't help wondering what the Adventist must have thought, when he appealed to his Savior, as he supposed, and the balloonist shied a sand bag at him and the other fellow in the basket threw out a beer bottle and asked, "Where in —— are we?"

The Adventist must have thought that the Savior of mankind was traveling in mighty queer company, or that he had taken the other fellow along as a frightful example. And what could the Adventist have thought when he saw a message thrown out of the balloon, and went with trembling limbs and beating heart to pick it up, believing that it was a command from on high to sinners, and found that it was nothing but a hand bill for a Chicago hand-me-down clothing store.

He must have come to the conclusion that the Son of Man had got pretty low down to take a job of bill posting for a reversible ulster and paper collar bazar. It must have been food for reflection for the Advent preacher, as he picked up the empty beer bottle, shied at him from the chariot that he supposed carried to earth the Redeemer of man. He must have wondered if some Milwaukee brewer had not gone to heaven and opened a brewery.

Of course we who are intelligent, and would know a balloon if we saw it, would not have had any such thoughts, but we must remember that this poor Advent preacher thought that the day had come that had been promised so long, and that Christ was going to make a landing in a strong Republican county. We may laugh at the Adventist's disappointment that the balloon did not tie up to a stump and take him on board, but it was a serious matter to him.

He had been waiting for the wagon, full of hope, and when it came, and he saw the helmet on King's head and thought it was a crown of glory, his heart beat with joy, and he plead in piteous accents not to be passed by, and the confounded gas bag went on and landed in a cranberry marsh, and the poor, foolish, weak, short-sighted man had to get in his work mighty lively to dodge the sand bags, beer bottles, and rolls of clothing store posters.

The Adventist would have been justified in renouncing his religion and joining the Democratic party. It is sad, indeed.

MR. PECK'S SUNDAY LECTURE.

The papers all around here are saying that I have a new Sunday Lecture, with a bad title. The way of it was this. A man in a neighboring city telegraphed me to know if I would deliver a "Sunday Lecture," and telling me to choose my subject, and answer by telegraph. I thought it was some joke of the boys. The idea of me delivering a Sunday lecture was ridiculous, so, in a moment of thoughtlessness I telegraphed back, "What in the d—— do you take me for?" I supposed that that would be enough to inform the man that I was not in the business. What do you suppose he did? He telegraphed back to me as follows: "All right. We have advertised you for Sunday. Subject, 'What the d—— do you take me for.'" You can judge something of my surprise and indignation.

That is how it was.

RELIGION AND FISH.

Newspaper reports of the proceedings of the Sunday School Association encamped on Lake Monona, at Madison, give about as many particulars of big catches of fish as of sinners. The delegates divide their time catching sinners on spoon-hooks and bringing pickerel to repentance. Some of the good men hurry up their prayers, and while the "Amen" is leaving their lips they snatch a fish-pole in one hand and a baking-powder box full of angle worms in the other, and light out for the Beautiful Beyond, where the rock bass turn up sideways, and the wicked cease from troubling.

Discussions on how to bring up children in the the way they should go are broken into by a deacon with his nose peeled coining up the bank with a string of perch in one hand, a broken fish-pole in the other, and a pair of dropsical pantaloons dripping dirty water into his shoes.

It is said to be a beautiful sight to see a truly good man offering up supplications from under a wide-brimmed fishing hat, and as he talks of the worm that never, or hardly ever dies, red angle worms that have dug out of the piece of paper in which they were rolled up are crawling out of his vest pocket. The good brothers compare notes of good places to do missionary work, where sinners are so thick you can knock them down with a club, and then they get boats and row to some place on the lake where a local liar has told them the fish are just sitting around on their haunches waiting for some one to throw in a hook.

This mixing religion with fishing for black bass and pickerel is a good thing for religion, and not a bad thing for the fish. Let these Christian statesmen get "mashed" on the sport of catching fish, and they will have more charity for the poor man who, after working hard twelve hours a day for six days, goes out on a lake Sunday and soaks a worm in the water and appeases the appetite of a few of God's hungry pike, and gets dinner for himself in the bargain. While arguing that it is wrong to fish on Sunday, they will be brought right close to the fish, and can see better than before, that if a poor man is rowing a boat across a lake on Sunday, and his hook hangs over the stern, with a piece of liver on, and a fish that nature has made hungry tries to steal his line and pole and liver, it is a duty he owes to society to take that fish by the gills, put it in the boat and reason with it, and try to show it that in leaving its devotions on a Sunday and snapping at a poor man's only hook, it was setting a bad example.

These Sunday school people will have a nice time, and do a great amount of good, if the fish continue to bite, and they can go home with their hearts full of the grace of God, their stomachs full of fish, their teeth full of bones; and if they fall out of the boats, and their suspenders hold out, they may catch a basin full of eels in the basement of their pantaloons. But we trust they will not try to compete with the local sports in telling fish stories. That would break up a whole Sunday school system.

THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

When you see an article in the editorial columns of a paper headed, "The Political Outlook," look at the bottom line, and if it says "sold by all druggists," don't read it. There is such an article going the rounds, which is an advertisement of a patent medicine. It is a counterfeit well calculated to deceive. Don't read a political article unless the owner's name is blown in the bottle.

ROPE LADDERS.

The law to compel hotel keepers to provide rope ladders for every room above the second floor, is said not to be enforced, though it should be by all means. The law ought to be amended so as to compel guests to get up once or twice during the night and run up or down the rope ladder, outside the window, in their night clothes, so as to be in practice in case of fire. When every room is provided with rope ladders there will be lots of fun. Those men who invariably blow out the gas, will probably think they have got to come down stairs on the rope ladder in the morning, and it will take an extra clerk to stand in the alleys around a hotel, with a shot gun, to keep impecunious guests from going away from the tavern via rope ladder. And then imagine an Oshkosh man in a Milwaukee hotel, his head full of big schemes, and his skin full of beer. He has been on a "bum," and is nervous, and on being shown to his room he sees the rope ladder coiled up under the window, ready to spring upon him. He stares at it, and the cold sweat stands all over him. The rope ladder returns his gaze, and seems to move and to crawl towards his feet. For a moment he is powerless to move. His hair stands on end, his heart ceases to beat, cold and warm chills follow each other down his trousers legs and he clutches at the air, his eyes start from their sockets, and just as the rope ladder is about to wind around him, and crush his life out, he regains strength enough to rush down stairs head over appetite, and tell the clerk about the menagerie up stairs. O, there is going to be fun with these rope ladders, sure.

A DOCTOR OF LAWS.

A doctor at Ashland is also a Justice of the Peace, and when he is called to visit a house he don't know whether he is to physic or to marry. Several times he has been called out in the night, to the country, and he supposed some one must be awful sick, and he took a cart load of medicines, only to find somebody wanted marrying. He has been fooled so much that when he is called out now he carries a pill-bag and a copy of the statutes, and tells them to take their choice.

He was called to one house and found a girl who seemed feverish. She was sitting up in a chair, dressed nicely, but he saw at once that the fatal flush was on her cheek, and her eyes looked peculiar. He felt of her pulse, and it was beating at the rate of two hundred a minute. He asked her to run out her tongue, and she run out eight or nine inches of the lower end of it. It was covered with a black coating, and he shook his head and looked sad. She had never been married any before, and supposed that it was necessary for a Justice who was going to marry a couple to know all about their physical condition, so she kept quiet and answered questions.

She did not tell him that she had been eating huckleberry pie, so he laid the coating on her tongue to some disease that was undermining her constitution. He put his ear on her chest and listened to the beating of her heart, and shook his head again. He asked her if she had been exposed to any contagious disease. She didn't know what a contagious disease was, but on the hypothesis that he had reference to sparking, she blushed and said she had, but only two evenings, because John had only just got back from the woods where he had been chopping, and she had to sit up with him.

The doctor got out his pill bags and made some quinine powders, and gave her some medicine in two tumblers, to be taken alternately, and told her to soak her feet and go to bed, and put a hot mustard plaster on her chest, and some onions around her neck.

She was mad, and flared right up, and said she wasn't very well posted, and lived in the country, but if she knew her own heart she would not play such a trick as that on a new husband.

The doctor got mad, and asked her if she thought he didn't understand his business; and he was about to go and let her die, when the bridegroom came in and told him to go ahead with the marrying. The doc. said that altered the case. He said next time he came he should know what to bring, and then she blushed, and told him he was an old fool anyway, but he pronounced them man and wife, and said the prescription would be five dollars, the same as though there had been somebody sick.

But the doc. had cheek. Just as he was leaving he asked the bridegroom if he didn't want to ride up to Ashland with him, it was only eighteen miles, and the ride would be lonesome, but the bride said not if the court knew herself, and the bridegroom said now he was there he guessed he would stay. He said he didn't care much about going to Ashland anyway.

COMFORTING COMPENSATIONS.

If a farmer's wheat is killed by rain, he is consoled by the fact that rain is just what his corn needs. If his cattle die of disease, his consolation lies in the hope that pork will bring a good price. If boys steal his watermelons, he knows by experience that they will have the cholera morbus. So everything that is unpleasant has its compensation.

LAY UP APPLES IN HEAVEN.



They tell a good story at Portage City, at the expense of Senator Barden, or a minister, we don't know which. Barden had a lot of apples sent him last fall, and he was anxious to sell them, before winter set in. One day he thought of a new minister that had settled in Portage, so he made up his mind to take him up a couple of barrels, supposing that when he went to heaven and saw the big ledger opened, there would be a credit about as follows:

L.W. BARDEN, in acc't with Providence,

1876. Oct. 21. By two bbls. apples, @ $3 $6.00 " " " drayage .30 ——- Total $6.30

Barden loaded them on a dray, and got on it, with his pants in his boots, and went up to deliver them himself. He stopped at the minister's gate, and hurried the apples off and rolled them inside the gate, and tried to get away before the minister had time to thank him. Just as he was about to drive away the door opened and the man of God came out, and says he: