"Look here! You put them apples in the cellar!"

Barden told him he was in something of a hurry, and really he could not spare the time. The minister raised his voice to a sort of "auction pitch," and said:

"Here, now. You don't know your business, Mr. Drayman. You roll them apples into the cellar, or I won't accept them."

The senator was by this time as mad as senators usually get. He jumped off the dray, threw the two barrels of apples on, and drove off, saying he didn't care a continental dam if the minister eat dried apples all winter. And he took them back to his store, and it is safe to say that he will not give many more apples to that minister.

MORAL:—Never despise a man because he wears a ragged coat, for he may be a senatorial granger angel in the disguise of a drayman. And you may have to fill up on turnips instead of apples.

ONE OF BEECHER'S CONVERTS.

Since Beecher, the great revivalist, was here, and spoke so eloquently on the fall of man, and the need of making arrangements for the future, I have become a changed man. It hurts me to lie now, and when anything hurts, then I quit. It is wrong to lie, and a man who follows it up will come to some bad end.

BUYING A STONE CRUSHER.

The proceedings of the council of the city of Milwaukee shows that the aldermen are about to buy a stone crusher, to be run by steam, for the purpose of crushing stones to be used on the streets. If the city has never indulged in the luxury of a stone crusher, it should interview some city that has owned one, before it closes a contract with any party that wants to sell one. Every party that owns one does want to sell it. Statistics show that. The first city in Wisconsin that bought one was Madison. The city owned it for a year or two, and after that no man that was in the council when it was bought could ever get in it again. The mayor that winked at the purchase of the stone crusher was defeated, and there was trouble. No person would ever say what was the matter, but you say "stone crusher" to a citizen of Madison, and he would reach his right hand around to his pistol pocket, and the conversation would cease.

La Crosse heard that Madison had a stone crusher, and so she wanted one. La Crosse is bound to have anything that any other town has, whether it is a railroad, an insane asylum, or a speckled hen. La Crosse could have bought Madison's stone crusher at a discount, but she wanted one new, with the paint all on, fresh. Second-hand stone crusher? Not any for La Crosse. So the city ordered a brand new one, right from the mint, at an expense of about $5,000.

The idea was that it would be about as big as a straw cutter, or a job press, and people were anxious to see it work.

Finally the city was notified that one train of cars loaded with the stone crusher had arrived, with red flags on, betokening extra trains running wild behind, and the city was told to come down to the depot and pay the first installment of freight, and take the stone crusher away—that part of it that had arrived. The aldermen went down and took an inventory of the hardware, and some of them went and jumped in the river. At a cent a pound one can buy a good deal of cast iron for five thousand dollars. The city bonded itself, and paid the freight, and during the spring all of the trains loaded with the stone crusher arrived. It was argued that the only way to get the stone crusher up to the city building would be to give the railroad the right of way up town, right through Main street.

Some were in favor of letting the railroad company keep it for freight, but the company threatened to get out an injunction on the city. Finally a man who took contracts to move brick buildings agreed to move it up town on shares, and during the summer the most of it was got up there and corded up on some vacant lots. If all the cast iron in it came out of one mine it must have been an immense mine. People would look at it and weep. Every alderman swore he voted against buying it. Occasionally some one in the council would suggest that the stone crusher be taken out to the bluffs, a couple of miles, and set to work, when another one would move, to amend by inserting a clause that the bluffs be moved into the city to be crushed, as it would save expense. Then the matter would drop. For three years that stone crusher stood there, and it never crushed a pebble. New mayors and aldermen were elected, and every day they passed that crusher, but they never spoke to it. Finally a job was put up to get rid of it. There was a man there who owned a stone quarry, and it occurred to somebody to sell it to him. He was a truly good man, and did not believe there were any bad men in the world, who would kanoodle him with a stone crusher. A committee was appointed to sell it to him. The committee was composed of men who had traded horses, sold lightning rods, and been insurance agents, and when they told the poor man that the city had noticed that he was a deserving man, that they had decided to help him along, and would sell him that stone crusher, and he could pay for it in crushed stone, and the city would pay him in cash half a dollar more than the stone was worth, he said he would take it. They got it on to him by buying crushed stone of him and paying cash for it.

We have never heard whether the man lived or not, and have never heard whether the city bought any stone of him, but the city got rid of it, and then had a celebration. Why, they figured it up, and the thing could crush enough stone in twenty-four hours to pave the streets a foot thick all over town and thirteen miles in the country. To run it a week would bankrupt the State of Wisconsin, It could go up to the stone quarry and tunnel a hole right through the hill. It was the biggest elephant that ever a city drew in a legalized lottery. Milwaukee will make money if she does not buy a stone crusher, not as long as it can buy stone in the rough, and have it crushed by tramps, at nothing a day.

MERRIE CHRISTMAS.

What proportion of the people who wish each other merry Christmas, do you suppose think of the reason that the day is a holiday? Not one in a thousand. Do the young fellows who put on a clean shirt and go down town and play pool all day, and drink yellow stuff out of a shaving cup, and get chalk on their fingers, and eat liver sausage, think that Christ died to save them? No! All they think of is the prospect of sticking some other fellow for the game. Do the hundreds of thousands of people who get up a big feed, and gormandize, think of Christ, or the poor all about them who have little to eat to-day, and little prospect of more to eat to-morrow? Many of them do not think of the poor, or of anything else except to prospect upon how much they will hold and not get sick.

THE DIFFERENCE IN HORSES.

There has been a great change in livery horses within the last twenty years. Years ago, if a young fellow wanted to take his girl out riding, and expected to enjoy himself, he had to hire an old horse, the worst in the livery stable, that would drive itself, or he never could get his arm around his girl to save him. If he took a decent looking team, to put on style, he had to hang on to the lines with both hands, and if he even took his eyes off the team to look at the suffering girl beside him, with his mouth, the chances were that the team would jump over a ditch, or run away, at the concussion. Riding out with girls was shorn of much of its pleasure in those days.

We knew a young man that was going to put one arm around his girl if he did not lay up a cent, and it cost him over three hundred dollars. The team ran away, the buggy was wrecked, one horse was killed, the girl had her hind leg broken, and the girl's father kicked the young man all over the orchard, and broke the mainspring of his watch.

It got so that the livery rig a young man drove was an index to his thoughts. If he had a stylish team that was right up on the bit, and full of vinegar, and he braced himself and pulled for all that was out, and the girl sat back in the corner of the buggy, looking as though she should faint away if a horse got his tail over a line, then people said that couple was all right, and there was no danger that they would be on familiar terms.

But if they started out with a slow old horse that looked as though all he wanted was to be left alone, however innocent the party might look, people knew just as well as though they had seen it, that when they got out on the road, or when night came on, that fellow's arm would steal around her waist, and she would snug up to him, and—Oh, pshaw, you have heard it before.

Well, late years the livery men have "got onto the racket," as they say at the church sociables, They have found that horses that know their business are in demand, and so horses are trained for this purpose. They are trained on purpose for out-door sparking. It is not an uncommon thing to see a young fellow drive up to the house where his girl lives with a team that is just tearing things. They prance, and champ the bit, and the young man seems to pull on them as though his liver was coming out. The horses will hardly stand still long enough for the girl to get in, and then they start off and seem to split the air wide open, and the neighbors say, "Them children will get all smashed up one of these days."

The girl's mother and father see the team start, and their minds experience a relief as they reflect that "as long as John drives that frisky team there can't be no hugging a going on." The girl's older sister sighs and says, "That's so," and goes to her room and laughs right out loud.

It would be instructive to the scientists to watch that team for a few miles. The horses fairly foam, before they get out of town, but striking the country road, the fiery steeds come down to a walk, and they mope along as though they had always worked on a hearse. The shady woods are reached, and the carriage scarcely moves, and the horses seem to be walking in their sleep. The lines are loose on the dash board, and the left arm of the driver is around the pretty girl, and they are talking low. It is not necessary to talk loud, as they are so near each other that the faintest whisper can be heard.

But a change comes over them. A carriage appears in front, coming towards them. It may be someone that knows them. The young man picks up the lines, and the horses are in the air, and as they pass the other carriage it almost seems as though the team is running away, and the girl that was in sweet repose a moment before acts as though she wanted to get out. After passing the intruder the walk and conversation are continued.

If you meet the party on the Whitefish Bay road at 10 o'clock at night, the horses are walking as quietly as oxen, and they never wake up until coming into town, and then he pulls up the team and drives through the town like a cyclone, and when he drives up to the house the old man is on the steps, and he thinks John must be awful tired trying to hold that team. And he is.

It is thought by some that horses have no intelligence, but a team that knows enough to take in a sporadic case of buggy sparking has got sense. These teams come high, but the boys have to have them.

BASE INGRATITUDE.

I remember once of offering a lady from Eau Claire a slice of bread and a half of a red onion in a railroad car. She looked hungry, and yet she said she didn't care to eat. Thinking she had a delicacy about accepting food at the hands of one who was almost a stranger to her, I turned the bread and onion into her lap, and said she was entirely welcome to it. What did she do? Instead of eating it, and thanking me, she threw it out of the window, and went and sat by the stove. I was never so offended in my life. That woman may see the time she will want that onion, and I would see her almost perish of starvation before she could have any more of my onion.

THE DIFFERENCE.

One of the great female writers on dress reform, in trying to illustrate how terrible the female dress is, says:

"Take a man and pin three or four table cloths about him, fastened back with elastic, and looped up with ribbons, draw all his hair to the middle of his head and tie it tight, and hairpin on five pounds of other hair and a big bow of ribbon. Keep the front locks on pins all night, and let them tickle his eyes all day, pinch his waist into a corset, and give him gloves a size too small, and shoes the same, and a hat that will not stay on without torturing elastic, and a little lace veil to blind his eyes whenever he goes out to walk, and he will know what a woman's dress is."

Now you think you have done it, don't you sis? Why, bless you, that toggery would be heaven compared to what a man has to contend with. Take a woman and put a pair of men's four shilling drawers on her that are so tight that when they get damp, from perspiration, sis, they stick so you can't cross your legs without an abrasion of the skin, the buckle in the back turning a somersault and sticking its points into your spinal meningitis; put on an undershirt that draws across the chest so you feel as though you must cut a hole in it, or two, and which is so short that it works up under your arms, and allows the starched upper shirt to sand paper around and file off the skin until you wish it was night, the tail of which will not stay tucked more than half a block, though you tuck, and tuck, and tuck; and then fasten a collar made of sheet zinc, two sizes too small for you, around your neck, put on vest and coat, and liver pad and lung pad and stomach pad, and a porous plaster, and a chemise shirt between the two others, and rub on some liniment, and put a bunch of keys and a jack-knife and a button hook, and a pocket-book and a pistol and a plug of tobacco in your pockets, so they will chafe your person, and then go and drink a few whiskey cocktails, and walk around in the sun with tight boots on, sis, and then you will know what a man's dress is.

Come to figure it up, it is about an even thing, sis,—isn't it?

THOSE STEP LADDERS!

There has got to be a law passed to punish the hardware dealers for selling those step ladders that shut up like a jack-knife. A Ninth Street woman got onto one the other afternoon when it looked as though there was going to be a frost, to take her ivies down and carry them in the house. We don't care how handsome a woman is naturally, you put a towel around her head and put her up on a step ladder about seven feet high, with a tomahawk in her left hand, trying to draw a big nail out of a post on a veranda, and she looks like thunder. This woman did. Her husband tried to get her to let him do the work, but she said a man never knew how to do anything, anyway. So he sat down on the steps to see how it would turn out. She said afterwards that he kicked the ladder, but however that may be, there was an earthquake, and when he looked up the air was filled with calico, toweling, striped stockings, polonaise, trailing arbutus, red petticoats, store hair and step ladder. He said the step ladder struck the veranda last, but as he picked her off of it, it seemed as though it must have lit first. He said the step ladder must have kicked up. In coming down she run one leg through the baby wagon, and the other through some flower pots, and a boy who was passing along said he guess she had been to the turning school.

WONDERS OF THE STAGE.

There is no person in the world who is easier to overlook the inconsistencies that show themselves on the stage at theatres than we are, but once in a while there is something so glaring that it pains us. We have seen actors fight a duel in a piece of woods far away from any town, on the stage, and when one of them fell, pierced to the heart with a sword, we have noticed that he fell on a Brussels carpet. That is all wrong, but we have stood it manfully.



We have seen a woman on the stage who was so beautiful that we could be easily mashed if we had any heart left to spare. Her eyes were of that heavenly color that has been written about heretofore, and her smile as sweet as ever was seen, but behind the scenes, through the wings, we have seen her trying to dig the cork out of a beer bottle with a pair of shears, and ask a supe, in harsh tones, where the cork-screw was, while she spread mustard on a piece of cheese, and finally drank the beer from the bottle, and spit the pieces of cork out on the floor, sitting astride of a stage chair, and her boot heels up on the top round, her trail rolled up into a ball, wrong side out, showing dirt from forty different stage floors.

These things hurt. But the worst thing that has ever occurred to knock the romance out of us, was to see a girl in the second act, after "twelve years is supposed to elapse," with the same pair of red stockings on that she wore in the first act, twelve years before. Now, what kind of a way is that? It does not stand to reason that a girl would wear the same pair of stockings twelve years. Even if she had them washed once in six months, they would be worn out. People notice these things.

What the actresses of this country need is to change their stockings. To wear them twelve years even in their minds, shows an inattention to the details and probabilities, of a play, that must do the actresses an injury, if not give them corns. Let theatre-goers insist that the stockings be changed oftener, in these plays that sometimes cover half a century, and the stockings will not become moth-eaten. Girls, look to the little details. Look to the stockings, as your audiences do, and you will see how it is yourselves.

HOW FARMERS MAY GET RICH.

The artificial propagation of fish has attracted much attention of late years, and the success of experiments has shown that every farmer that has a stream of water on his land can raise fish enough to get rich in five years, four months and twenty-one days.

A CASE OF PARALYSIS.

About as mean a trick as we ever heard of was perpetrated by a doctor at Hudson last Sunday. The victim was a justice of the peace named Evans. Mr. Evans is a man who has the alfiredest biggest feet east of St. Paul, and when he gets a new pair of shoes it is an event that has its effect on the leather market.

Last winter he advertised for sealed proposals to erect a pair of shoes for him, and when the bids were opened it was found that a local architect in leather had secured the contract, and after mortgaging his house to a Milwaukee tannery, and borrowing some money on his diamonds of his "uncle," John Comstock, who keeps a pawnbrokery there, he broke ground for the shoes.

Owing to the snow blockade and the freshets, and the trouble to get hands who would work on the dome, there were several delays, and Judge Evans was at one time inclined to cancel the contract, and put some strings in box cars and wear them in place of shoes, but sympathy for the contractor, who had his little awl invested in the material and labor, induced him to put up with the delay.

On Saturday the shoes were completed, all except laying the floor and putting on a couple of bay windows for corns and conservatories for bunions, and the judge concluded to wear them on Sunday. He put them on, but got the right one on the left foot, and the left one on the right foot. As he walked down town the right foot was continually getting on the left side, and he stumbled over himself, and he felt pains in his feet. The judge was frightened in a minute. He is afraid of paralysis, all the boys know it, and when he told a wicked Republican named Spencer how his feet felt, that degraded man told the judge that it was one of the surest symptoms of paralysis in the world, and advised him to hunt a doctor.

The judge pranced off, interfering at every step, skinning his shins, and found Dr. Hoyt. The doctor is one of the worst men in the world, and when he saw how the shoes were put on he told the judge that his case was hopeless unless something was done immediately. The judge turned pale, the sweat poured out of him, and taking out his purse he gave the doctor five dollars and asked him what he should do. The doctor felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, listened at his heart, shook his head, and then told the judge that he would be a dead man in less than sixty years if he didn't change his shoes.

The judge looked down at the vast expanse of leather, both sections pointing inwardly, and said, "Well, dam a fool," and "changed cars" at the junction. As he got them on the right feet, and hired a raftsman to tie them up for him, he said he would get even with the doctor if he had to catch the small pox. O, we suppose they have more fun in some of these country towns than you can shake a stick at.

WE WILL CELEBRATE.

With so many new holidays, and so many new people, it is hardly to be wondered at that the day of all days, the day that should be dearest to the heart of every American, is in danger of being passed over in silence, and were it not for the fire cracker, that begins to get in its work about the first of June, in many instances this Anniversary of American Independence would be passed without the customary mouth shootzen-fest from alleged orators, but when the small boy begins to stir around and clandestinely look down the muzzle of the always loaded fire cracker, the patriotism of the boys still begins to assert itself, the old man's eyes begin to snap, and he talks to his neighbor about how they used to celebrate when he was a boy, the stuff begins to work over the neighborhood, the village catches it, the country begins.

DOGS AND HUMAN BEINGS!

Lorillard, the New York tobacco man, had a poodle dog stolen, and has offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the arrest of the thief, and he informs a reporter that he will spend $10,000, if necessary, for the capture and conviction of the thief. [Applause.]

The applause marked in there will be from human skye terriers, who have forgotten that only a few weeks ago several hundred girls, who had been working in Lorillard's factory, went on a strike because as they allege, they were treated like dogs. We doubt if they were treated as well as this poodle was treated. We doubt, in case one of these poor, virtuous girls was kidnapped, if the great Lorillard would have offered as big a reward for the conviction of the human thief, as he has for the conviction of the person who has eloped with his poodle.

We hope that the aristocracy of this country will never get to valuing a dog higher than it does a human being. When it gets so that a rich person would not permit a poodle to do the work in a tobacco factory that a poor girl does to support a sick mother, hell had better be opened for summer boarders. When girls work ten hours a day stripping nasty tobacco, and find at the end of the week that the fines for speaking are larger than the wages, and the fines go for the conviction of thieves who steal the girl's master's dog, no one need come around here lecturing at a dollar a head and telling us there is no hell.

When a poor girl, who has gone creeping to her work at daylight, looks out of the window at noon to see her master's carriage go by, in which there is a five hundred dollar dog with a hundred dollar blanket on, and a collar set with diamonds, lolling on satin cushions, and the girl is fined ten cents for looking out of, the window, you don't want to fool away any time trying to get us to go to a heaven where such heartless employers are expected.

It is seldom the Sun gets on its ear, but it can say with great fervency, "Damn a man that will work poor girls like slaves, and pay them next to nothing, and spend ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief!" If these sentiments are sinful, and for expressing them we are a candidate for fire and brimstone, it is all right, and the devil can stoke up and make up our bunk when he hears that we are on the through train.

It seems now—though we may change our mind the first day at the fire—as though we had rather be in hades with a hundred million people who have always done the square thing, than to be in any heaven that will pass a man in who has starved the poor and paid ten thousand dollars to catch a dog-thief. We could have a confounded sight better time, even if we had our ulster all burned off. It would be worth the price of admission to stand with our back to the fire, and as we began to smell woolen burning near the pistol pocket, to make up faces at the ten-thousand-dollar-dog millionaires that were putting on style at the other place.

AN ODOROUS BOHEMIAN.

A Bohemian on the train last night had some cheese in his vest pocket that was too ripe, and the conductor had to disinfect the car, and order the Bohemian to be quarantined before the train would be allowed to enter the city. Cheese is all right in its place, but it don't want to be allowed to lay above ground too long after it has departed this life. If farmers will pay a little attention to cheese in its different stages, much trouble can be avoided. In union there is strength. So there is in a smoking car.

TRAGEDY ON THE STAGE.

The tendency of the stage is to present practical, everyday affairs in plays, and those are the most successful which are the most natural. The shoeing of a horse on the stage in a play attracts the attention of the audience wonderfully, and draws well. The inner workings of a brewery, or a mill, is a big card, but there is hardly enough tragedy about it. If they could run a man or two through the wheel, and have them cut up into hash, or have them drowned in a beer vat, audiences could applaud as they do when eight or nine persons are stabbed, poisoned or beheaded in the Hamlets and Three Richards, where corpses are piled up on top of each other.

What the people want is a compromise between old tragedy and new comedy. Now, if some manager could have a love play, where the heroine goes into a slaughter house to talk love to the butcher, instead of a blacksmith shop or a brewery, it would take. A scene could be set for a slaughter house, with all the paraphernalia for killing cattle, and supe butchers to stand around the star butcher with cleavers and knives.

The star butcher could sit on a barrel of pigs' feet, or a pile of heads and horns, and soliloquize over his unrequitted love, as he sharpened a butcher knife on his boot. The hour for slaughtering having arrived, cattle could be driven upon the stage, the star could knock down a steer and cut its throat, and hang it up by the hind legs and skin it, with the audience looking on breathlessly.

As he was about to cut open the body of the dead animal, the orchestra could suddenly break the stillness, and the heroine could waltz out from behind a lot of dried meat hanging up at one side, dressed in a lavender satin princess dress, en train, with a white reception hat with ostrich feathers, and, wading through the blood of the steer on the carpet, shout, "Stay your hand, Reginald!"

The star butcher could stop, wipe his knife on his apron, motion to the supe butchers to leave, and he would take three strides through the blood and hair, to the side of the heroine, take her by the wrist with his bloody hand, and shout, "What wiltest thou, Mary Anderson de Montmorence?" Then they could sit down on a box of intestines and liver and things and talk it over, and the curtain could go down with the heroine swooning in the arms of the butcher.



Seven years could elapse between that act and the next, and a scene could be laid in a boarding house, and some of the same beef could be on the table, and all that. Of course we do not desire to go into details. We are no play writer, but we know what takes. People have got tired of imitation blood on the stage. They kick on seeing a man killed in one act, and come out as good as new in the next. Any good play writer can take the cue from this article and give the country a play that will take the biscuit.

Imagine John McCullough, or Barrett, instead of killing Roman supes with night gowns on, and bare legs, killing a Texas steer. There's where you would get the worth of your money. It would make them show the metal within them, and they would have to dance around to keep from getting a horn in their trousers. It does not require any pluck to go out behind the scenes with a sword and kill enough supes for a mess.

GRANITE HEAD CHEESE.

A few years ago there was some excitement at Grand Rapids over the discovery of a bed or quarry of granite. Some of it was taken out, from the top of the quarry, and polished, and proved to be as fine as any that is imported. Further working of the quarry, however, has developed a strange thing. The further they go down the softer it is, and it has been learned that the quarry is all head cheese, such as is sold by butchers. On top it is petrified, and polishes very nicely, but a little below it is nice and fresh, and can be cut out with a knife, all ready for the table. A friend in Milwaukee, who has an uncle living at Grand Rapids, has furnished us with a quantity of it, some of which we have eaten, and were it not for the fact that we know it came from the quarry, it would be hard to convince us that it was not concocted out of the remains of a butcher shop. The people up there talk of running Hon. J.N. Brundage for Congress, on the head cheese ticket, in order that he may use his influence to get head cheese adopted as an army ration, and also as currency with which to wipe out the national debt.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA AN INVENTOR.

"Ha! Ha! Now I have got you," said the grocery man to the had boy, the other morning, as he came in and jumped upon the counter and tied the end of a ball of twine to the tail of a dog, and "sicked" the dog on another dog that was following a passing sleigh, causing the twine to pay out until the whole ball was scattered along the block. "Condemn you, I've a notion to choke the liver out of you. Who tied that twine to the dog's tail?"

The boy choked up with emotion, and the tears came into his eyes, and he said he didn't know anything about the twine or the dog. He said he noticed the dog come in, and wag his tail around the twine, but he supposed the dog was a friend of the family, and did not disturb him. "Everybody lays everything that is done to me," said the boy, as he put his handkerchief to his nose, "and, they will be sorry for it when I die. I have a good notion to poison myself by eating some of your glucose sugar."

"Yes, and you do about everything that is mean. The other day a lady came in and told me to send up to her house, some of my country sausage, done up in muslin bags, and while she was examining it she noticed something hard inside the bags, and asked me what it was, and I opened it, and I hope to die if there wasn't a little brass padlock and a piece of red morocco dog collar imbedded in the sausage. Now how do you suppose that got in there?" and the grocery man looked savage.

The boy looked interested, and put on an expression as though in deep thought, and finally said, "I suppose the farmer that put up the sausage did not strain the dog meat. Sausage meat ought to be strained."

The grocery man pulled in about half a block of twine, after the dog had run against a fence and broke it, and told the boy he knew perfectly well how the brass padlock came to be in the sausage, but thinking it was safer to have the good will of the boy than the ill will, he offered him a handful of prunes.

"No," said the boy, "I have swore off on mouldy prunes. I am no kinder-garden any more. For years I have eaten rotten peaches around this store, and everything you couldn't sell, but I have turned over a new leaf now, and after this nothing is too good for me. Since Pa has got to be an inventor, we are going to live high."

"What's your Pa invented? I saw a hearse and three hacks go up on your street the other day and I thought may be you had killed your Pa."

"Not much. There will be more than three hacks when I kill Pa, and don't you forget it. Well, sir, Pa has struck a fortune, if he can make the thing work. He has got an idea about coal stoves that will bring him several million dollars, if he gets a royalty of five dollars on every cook stove in the world. His idea is to have a coal stove on castors with the pipe made to telescope out and in, and rubber hose for one joint, so you can pull the stove all around the room and warm any particular place. Well, sir, to hear Pa tell about it, you would think it would revolutionize the country, and maybe it will when he gets it perfected, but he came near burning the house up, and scared us half to death this morning, and burned his shirt off, and he is all covered with cotton with sweet oil on, and he smells like salad dressing.

"You see Pa had a pipe made and some castors put on our coal stove, and he tied a rope to the hearth of the stove, and had me put in some kindling wood and coal last night, so he could draw the stove up to the bed and light the fire without getting up. Ma told him he would put his foot in it, and he told her to dry up, and let him run the stove business. He said it took a man with brain to run a patent right, and Ma she pulled the clothes over her head and let Pa do the fire act. She has been building the fires for twenty years, and thought she would let Pa see how good it was. Well, Pa pulled the stove to the bed, and touched off the kindling wood. I guess maybe I got a bundle of kindling wood that the hired girl had put kerosene on, cause it blazed up awful and smoked, and the blaze bursted out the doors and windows of the stove, and Pa yelled fire, and I jumped out of bed and rushed in and he was the scartest man you ever see, and you'd a dide to see how he kicked when I threw a pail of water on his legs and put his shirt out. Ma did not get burned, but she was pretty wet, and she told Pa she would pay five dollars royalty on that stove and take the castors off and let it remain stationary. Pa says he will make it work if he burns the house down. I think it was real mean in Pa to get mad at me because I threw cold water on him instead of warm water, to put his shirt out. If I had waited till I could heat water to the right temperature I would have been an orphan and Pa would have been a burnt offering. But some men always kick at everything. Pa has given up business entirely and says he shall devote the remainder of his life curing himself of the different troubles that I get him into. He has retained a doctor by the year, and he buys liniment by the gallon.

"What was it about your folks getting up in the middle of the night to eat? The hired girl was over here after some soap the other morning, and she said she was going to leave your house."

"Well, that was a picnic. Pa said he wanted breakfast earlier than we was in the habit of having it, and he said I might see to it that the house was awake early enough. The other night I awoke with the awfulest pain you ever heard of. It was that night that you give me and my chum the bottle of pickled oysters that had begun to work. Well, I could't sleep, and I thought I would call the hired girls, and they got up and got breakfast to going, and then I rapped on Pa's and Ma's door and told them the breakfast was getting cold, and they got up and came down. We ate breakfast by gas light, and Pa yawned and said it made a man feel good to get up and get ready for work before daylight, the way he used to on the farm, and Ma she yawned and agreed with Pa, 'cause she has to, or have a row. After breakfast we sat around for an hour, and Pa said it was a long time getting daylight, and bimeby Pa looked at his watch. When he began to pull out his watch I lit out and hid in the storeroom, and pretty soon I heard Pa and Ma come up stairs and go to bed, and then the hired girls, they went to bed, and when it was all still, and the pain had stopped inside of my clothes, I went to bed, and I looked to see what time it was and it was two o'clock in the morning. We got dinner at eight o'clock in the morning, and Pa said he guessed he would call up the house after this, so I have lost another job, and it was all on account of that bottle of pickled oysters you gave me. My chum says he had colic too, but he didn't call up his folks. It was all he could do to get up himself. Why don't you give away something that is not spiled?"

The groceryman said he guessed he knew what to give away, and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery, that he had made on wrapping paper with red chalk, which read, "Rotten eggs, good enough for custard pies, for 18 cents a dozen."

A GOOD LAND ENOUGH.

This land of the free is good enough, if we make it good, and if we make it bad, it is just as bad as any country under the sun. It all depends on how the people act.

THE WOODCOCK.

It is a rainy day, and nothing has occurred of a local nature, that is, nothing of a hair standing nature, so we will just spoil a few sheets of paper relating, in a Sunday School book style, the circumstances of an excursion after woodcock, the other day, indulged in by W.C. Root, the Wisconsin amateur Bogardus, Jennings McDonald, Captain of a breech-loading steamboat, and the subscriber. In the first place, it may be well to state that the woodcock, or "Timber Doodle," as Prof. Agassiz calls it, is a game bird. We know it is a game bird, because they charge a dollar apiece for them in New York. The meat is about as sweet as deceased cow's liver, but they are worth a dollar apiece. The "Timber Doodle" is a patriotic bird, because he gets ripe on the 4th of July. He is about the size of a doughnut, with a long bill, like a lawyer.

We took passage per skiff at twelve o'clock. If there was one drawback, it was the fact that the oar-locks of the boat had been mislaid. After consuming an hour in not finding them, Frank Hatch became discouraged at seeing us lay around the levee, so he tied the oars on with tarred rope and we got off, three of us besides the other dogs. The water was so high that we crossed Barron's island, only having to get out and pull the boat over two or three sand-bars and a raft or two. Every time we got out to pull the boat, the dogs would get out to look for woodcock, around the stumps, and when they got in the boat would be full of water and mud, and of course we had our best clothes on. Did it ever occur to you how much water a dog could carry in his hair? A dog is worse than a sponge. An ordinary dog, with luck, can fill a skiff with water at two jumps. Not, however, with us in the boat to bail out the water. The woodcock's tail sticks up like a sore thumb. We are thus particular to describe the woodcock, so if you ever see one you can go right away from him. Woodcock and mosquitoes are in "cahoots." While the woodcock bores in the ground for snakes and other feed that makes him fat and worth a dollar in New York, the mosquito stands on the ramparts and talks to the boys.

Well, speaking about woodcock, after riding five miles, through bushes, brambles and things, we got out of the boat and only had to walk a couple of miles to get where the birds were. Right here we wish to state that we shouldn't have gone after the woodcock at all, only everybody said it was such fun. Root showed us a picture of a woodcock in a book, and if that didn't convince us, the fact that a small boy came in town and sold three dozen, did. Then we wanted to go. There never has been a year when woodcock were so plenty at places we didn't visit. The most fun was at a ditch which was about a foot wider than any of us could jump. Root gave his gun to McDonald and plunged in. Then McDonald threw a gun to Root. It hit him on the thumb-nail and dropped in the ditch out of sight. Mc. thought it was Root's gun, and he apologized to Root for throwing it so carelessly. Root supposed it was Mc.'s gun, and he apologized for not catching it. We never saw men more polite in the world. Mc. started to jump across, when a dog got between his legs, and both went in up to their knees. You never can jump as well with a dog tangled up amongst your legs. The dog looked at Jennings as though he wanted to swear. We waded through the ditch and only got two feet wet. The rest of them had more than that wet.

But about the woodcock. This is, kind reader, purely a woodcock story, and more or less must be said about the dollar bird. But this is neither here nor there. It was over in the Root river bottoms. Finally we got on the woodcock ground and went to work. Talk about mosquitoes! There was no end to them. We ought not to say that, either, because there are spots on our person that just fit the end of a mosquito. There was an end to them. If you never saw mosquitoes in convention, you want to go over there. And right here we will give a recipe for keeping mosquitoes from biting. You take some cedar oil and put on your coat collar, if you are a man, and if you are a woman put it on that gingerbread work around your neck, and a mosquito will come up and sing to you and get all ready to take toll, when she will smell that oil. She is the sickest mosquito you ever saw. She turns over on her back and sends her husband for the nearest doctor. We had a bottle of cedar oil, and if Jennings hadn't left it hanging up in Hogan's store in his coat, we should have made those mosquitoes sick. As it was they did it to us. There isn't a spot on us as big as a billiard table but what you can find artesian wells made by mosquitoes.

Woodcock sell higher in the market than any other bird. Lots of people that never saw them eat snakes, eat them. When they get up to fly they talk Bohemian, and get behind a bush. You shoot right into the bush, and if you kill one you think you are a good shot. Talk about getting tired. You walk around in the woods several miles, with mosquitoes getting acquainted with you, and all the time your nerves strung up in anticipation of seeing a dollar bill fly up, and if you don't sleep without rocking, we are no prophet. The sport, however, is exhilerating, and we are glad we went. We are glad because it learned us one thing, and that is, if we ever want a woodcock real bad, it will be cheaper, easier, and better to buy it. It will be inferred that we did not see a woodcock. Such is the case.

But we made the blackbirds sick.

A BALD-HEADED MAN MOST CRAZY.

Last Wednesday the bell to our telephone rung violently at 8 o'clock in the morning, and when we put our ear to the earaphone, and our mouth to the mouthaphone, and asked what was the matter, a still small voice, evidently that of a lady, said, "Julia has got worms, doctor."

We were somewhat taken back, but supposing Julia was going fishing, we were just going to tell her not to forget to spit on her bait, when a male voice said, "O, go to the devil, will you?" We couldn't tell whose voice it was, but it sounded like the clerk at the Plankinton House, and we sat down.

There is no man who will go further to accommodate a friend than we will, but by the great ethereal there are some things we will not do to please anybody. As we sat and meditated, the bell rang once more, and then we knew the wires had got tangled, and that we were going to have trouble all day. It was a busy day, too, and to have a bell ringing beside one's ear all day is no fun.

The telephone is a blessed thing when it is healthy, but when its liver is out of order it is the worst nuisance on record. When it is out of order that way you can hear lots of conversation that you are not entitled to. For instance, we answered the bell after it had rung several times, and a sweet little female voice said, "Are you going to receive to-morrow?" We answered that we were going to receive all the time. Then she asked what made us so hoarse? We told her that we had sat in a draft from the bank, and it made the cold chills run over us to pay it. That seemed to be satisfactory, and then she began to tell us what she was going to wear, and asked if we thought it was going to be too cold to wear a low neck dress and elbow sleeves. We told her that was what we were going to wear, and then she began to complain that her new dress was too tight in various places that she mentioned, and when the boys picked us up off the floor and bathed our temples, and we told them to take her away, they thought we were crazy.



If we have done wrong in talking with a total strangers who took us for a lady friend, we are willing to die. We couldn't help it. For an hour we would not answer the constant ringing of the bell, but finally the bell fluttered as though a tiny bird had lit upon the wire and was shaking its plumage. It was not a ring, but it was a tune, as though an angel, about eighteen years old, a blonde angel, was handling the other end of the transmitter, and we felt as though it was wrong for us to sit and keep her in suspense, when she was evidently dying to pour into our auricular appendage remarks that we ought to hear.

And still the bell did flut. We went to the cornucopia, put our ear to the toddy stick and said, "What ailest thou darling, why dost thy hand tremble? Whisper all thou feelest to thine old baldy." Then there came over the wire and into our mansard by a side window the following touching remarks: "Matter enough. I have been ringing here till I have blistered my hands. We have got to have ten car loads of hogs by day after to-morrow or shut down." Then there was a stuttering, and then another voice said, "Go over to Loomis' pawn shop. A man shot in"—and another voice broke in singing, "The sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful"—and another voice said—"girl I ever saw. She was riding with a duffer, and wiped her nose as I drove by in the street car, and I think she is struck after me."

It was evident that the telephone was drunk, and we went out in the hall and wrote on a barrel all the afternoon, and gave it full possession of the office.

CONVENIENT CURRENCY.

What we want is a currency that every farmer can issue for himself. A law should be passed making the products of the farm a legal tender for all debts, public and private, including duties on imports, interest on the public debt, and contributions for charitable purposes. Then we shall have a new money table about as follows:

Ten ears of corn make one cent. Ten cucumbers make one dime. Ten watermelons make one dollar. Ten bushels of wheat make one eagle.

THE GOSPEL CAR.

Because there are cars for the luxurious, and smoking cars for those who delight in tobacco, some of the religious people of Connecticut are petitioning the railroad companies to fit up "Gospel cars." Instead of the card tables, they want an organ and piano, they want the seats arranged facing the centre of the car, so they can have a full view of whoever may conduct the services; instead of spittoons they will have a carpet, and instead of cards they want Bibles and Gospel song books.—Chicago News.

There is an idea for you. Let some railroad company; fit up a Gospel car according to the above prescription, and run it, and the porter on that car would be the most lonesome individual on the train. The Gospel hymn books would in a year appear as new as do now the Bibles that are put up in all cars. Of the millions of people who ride in the trains, many of them pious Christians, who has ever seen a man or woman take a Bible off the iron rack and read it a single minute? And yet you can often see ministers and other professing Christians in the smoking car, puffing a cigar and reading a daily paper.

Why, it is all they can do to get a congregation in a church on Sunday; and does any one suppose that when men and women are traveling for business or pleasure—and they do not travel for anything else—that they are going into a "Gospel car" to listen to some sky pirate who has been picked up for the purpose, talk about the prospects of landing the cargo in heaven?

Not much!

The women are too much engaged looking after their baggage, and keeping the cinders out of their eyes, and keeping the children's heads out of the window, and keeping their fingers from being jammed, to look out for their immortal souls. And the men are too much absorbed in the object of their trip to listen to gospel truths. They are thinking about whether they will be able to get a room at the hotel, or whether they will have to sleep on a cot.

Nobody can sing gospel songs on a car, with their throats full of cinders, and their eyes full of dust, and the chances are if anybody should strike up, "A charge to keep I have," some pious sinner who was trying to take a nap in the corner of the gospel car would say:

"O, go and hire a hall!"

It would be necessary to make an extra charge of half a dollar to those who occupied the gospel car, the same as is charged on the parlor car, and you wouldn't get two persons on an average train full that would put up a nickel.

Why, we know a Wisconsin Christian, worth a million dollars, who, when he comes up from Chicago to the place where he lives, hangs up his overcoat in the parlor car, and then goes into the forward car and rides till the whistle blows for his town, when he goes in and gets his coat and never says thirty-five cents to the conductor, or ten cents to the porter. Do you think a gospel car would catch him for half a dollar? He would see you in Hades first.

The best way is to take a little eighteen-carat religion along into the smoking car, or any other car you may happen to be in.

A man—as we understand religion from those who have had it—does not have to howl to the accompaniment of an asthmatic organ, pumped by a female with a cinder in her eye and smut on her nose, in order to enjoy religion, and he does not have to be in the exclusive company of other pious people to get the worth of his money. There is a great deal of religion in sitting in a smoking car, smoking dog-leg tobacco in a briar-wood pipe, and seeing happy faces in the smoke that curls up—faces of those you have made happy by kind words, good deeds, or half a dollar put where it will drive away hunger, instead of paying it out for a reserved seat in a gospel car. Take the half dollar you would pay for a seat in a gospel car and go into the smoker, and find some poor emigrant that is going west to grow up with the country, after having been beaten out of his money at Castle Garden, and give it to him, and see if the look of thankfulness and joy does not make you feel better than to listen to a discussion in the gospel car, as to wheiher the children of Israel went through the Red Sea with life-preservers, or wore rubber hunting boots.

Take your gospel-car half dollar and buy a vegetable ivory rattle of the train boy, and give it to the sick emigrant mother's pale baby, and you make four persons happy—the baby, the mother, the train boy and yourself.

We know a man who gave a dollar to a prisoner on the way to State prison, to buy tobacco with, who has enjoyed more good square religion over it than he could get out of all the chin music and saw-filing singing he could hear in a gospel car in ten years. The prisoner was a bad man from Oshkosh, who was in a caboose in charge of the sheriff, on the way to Waupun. The attention of the citizen was called to the prisoner by his repulsive appearance, and his general don't-care-a-damative appearance. The citizen asked the prisoner how he was fixed for money to buy tobacco with in prison. He said he hadn't a cent, and he knew it would be the worst punishment he could have to go without tobacco. The citizen gave him the dollar and said:

"Now, every time you take a chew of tobacco in prison, just make up your mind to be square when you get out."

The prisoner reached out his hand-cuffed hands to take the dollar, the hands trembling so that the chains rattled and a great tear as big as a shirt-button appeared in one eye—the other eye had been gouged out while "having some fun with the boys" at Oshkosh—and his lips trembled as he said:

"So help me God, I will!"

That man has been boss of a gang of hands in the pinery for two winters, and has a farm paid for on the Central Railroad, and is "square."

That is the kind of practical religion a worldly man can occasionally practice without having a gospel car.

BANKS AND BANKING.

The subject of banking has engrossed the attention of your excellent Governor for, lo! these many weeks, and he is constrained to say that some radical changes must be made in the method of receiving deposits by banks, where an equivalent is not rendered, of His Excellency will be compelled to emerge from his present aristocratic quarters and take up his abode in the poor-house. I would call your attention to the practice certain banks have of issuing checks in lieu of cash. If these checks were available at the groceries it would be better than it is. Banks have got in a habit of issuing a species of ivory button in receipt for the green coin of the realm which is only good at the counter of the bank. These checks are not issued by the National Banks, but by the State Banks, denominated "Keno" and "Faro." I would not charge that there is "skullduggery" or "shenanagen" going on in these institutions, as the president of one of them informed me, confidentially, that he dealt on the "square," but it is a noticeable fact that the dividends received by those who do business with the banks, are almost, as it were, imperceptible. I trust that you will cause this branch of industry to be thoroughly investigated, and report by bill or otherwise. Our finances should be beyond suspicion of dishonesty.

LARGE MOUTHS ABE FASHIONABLE.

The fashion papers, which are authority on the styles, claim that ladies with large mouths are all the fashion now, and that those whose mouths are small and rosebud like are all out of style. It is singular the freaks that are taken by fashion. Years ago a red-headed girl, with a mouth like a slice cut out of a muskmelon, would have been laughed at, and now such a girl is worth going miles to see.

It is easier to color the hair red, and be in fashion, than it is to enlarge the mouth, though a mouth that has any give to it can be helped by the constant application of a glove stretcher during the day, and by holding the cover to a tin blacking box while sleeping. What in the world the leaders of fashion wanted to declare large mouths the style for, the heavens only can tell.

Take a pretty face and mortise about a third of it for mouth, and it seems to us as though it is a great waste of raw material. There is no use that a large mouth can be put to that a small mouth would not do better, unless it is used for a pigeon hole to file away old sets of false teeth. They can't certainly, be any better for kissing.

You all remember the traveling man who attended the church fair at Kalamazoo, where one of the sisters would give a kiss for ten cents. He went up and paid his ten cents, and was about to kiss her when he noticed that her mouth was one of those large, open face, cylinder escapement, to be continued mouths. It commenced at the chin and went about four chains and three links in a northwesterly direction, then around by her ear, across under the nose and back by the other ear to the place of beginning, and containing twelve acres, more or less.

The traveling man said he was only a poor orphan, and had a family to support, and if he never came out alive it would be a great hardship upon those dependent upon him for support, and he asked her as a special favor that she take her hand and take a reef in one side of the mouth so it would be smaller. She consented, and puckered in a handful of what would have been cheek, had it not been mouth. He looked at her again and found that the mouth had become a very one-sided affair, and he said he had just one more favor to ask.



He was not a man that was counted hard to suit when he was at home in Chicago, but he would always feel as though he had got his money's worth, and go away with pleasanter recollections of Kalamazoo, if she would kindly take her other hand and draw the other side of her mouth together, and he would be content to take his ten cents' worth out of what was left unemployed.

This was too much, and she gave him a terrible look, and returned him his ten cents, saying, "Do you think, sir, because you are a Chicago drummer, that for ten cents you can take a kiss right out of the best part of it? Go! Get thee to a nunnery," and he went and bought a lemonade with the money.

We would not advise any lady whose mouth is small to worry about this new fashion, and try to enlarge the one nature has given her. Large mouths will have their run in a few brief months and will be much sought after by the followers of fashion, but in a short time the little ones that pout, and look cunning, will come to the front and the large ones will be for rent. The best kind of a mouth to have is a middling sized one, that has a dimple by its sides, which is always in style.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

Under this heading I can think of nothing that appears more appropriate than the subject of the artificial propagation of fish. It is a subject that has arrested the attention of many of the ablest minds of the country, and the results of experiments have been thus far so satisfactory that it is almost safe to predict that within the next ten centuries every man, however poor, may pick bull-heads off of his crab apple vines and gather his winter supply of fresh shad from his sweet potato trees at less than fifty cents a pound. The experiments that have been made in our own state warrant us in going largely into the fish business. A year ago a quantity of fish seeds were sub soil plowed into the ice of Lake Mendota, and to-day I am informed that boarders at the hotels there have all the fish to eat that any reasonable man could desire. The expense is small and the returns are enormous. It is estimated that from the six quarts of fish seeds that were planted in the lake there are now ready for the market at least 11,000,000 car loads of brain-producing food, if you spit on your bait when you go fishing.

PECK'S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA GETS BOXED.

"You don't want to buy a good parrot, do you?" said the bad boy to the grocery man as he put his wet mittens on the top of the stove to dry, and kept his back to the stove so he could watch the grocery man, and be prepared for a kick, if the man should remember the rotten egg sign that the boy put up in front of the grocery last week.

"Naw, I don't want no parrot. I had rather have a fool boy around than a parrot. But what's the matter with your Ma's parrot? I thought she wouldn't part with him for anything."

"Well, she wouldn't until Wednesday night, but now she says she will not have him around, and I may have half I can get for him. She told me to go to some saloon or some disreputable place and sell him, and I thought maybe he would about suit you," and the boy broke into a bunch of celery, and took out a few tender stalks and rubbed them on a codfish to salt them, and began to bite the stalks, while he held the sole of one wet boot up against the stove to dry it, making a smell of burned leather that came near turning the stomach of the cigar sign.

"Look-a-here boy, don't you call this a disreputable place. Some of the best people in this town come here," said the grocery man as he held up the cheese knife and grated his teeth as though he would like to jab it into the youth.

"O, that's all right, they come here 'cause you trust; but you make up what you lose by charging it to other people. Pa will make it hot for you the last of the week. He has been looking over your bill, and comparing it with the hired girl, and she says we haven't ever had a prune, or a dried apple, or a raisin, or any cinnamon, or crackers and cheese out of your store, and he says you are worse than the James brothers, and that you used to be a three card monte man, and he will have you arrested for highway robbery, but you can settle that with Pa. I like you, because you are no ordinary sneak thief, you are a high-toned, gentlemanly sort of a bilk, and wouldn't take anything you couldn't lift. O, keep your seat, and don't get excited. It does a man good to hear the truth from one who has got the nerve to tell it.

"But about the parrot. Ma has been away from home for a week, having a high old time in Chicago, going to theatres and things, and while she was gone, I guess the hired girl or somebody learned the parrot some new things to say. A parrot that can only say 'Polly wants a cracker,' don't amount to anything—what we need is new style parrots that can converse on the topics of the day, and say things original. Well, when Ma got back I guess her conscience hurt her for the way she had been carrying on in Chicago, and so when she heard the basement of the church was being frescoed, she invited the committee to hold the Wednesday evening prayer meeting at our house. First, there were four people came, and Ma asked Pa to stay to make up a quorum, and Pa said seeing he had two pair, he guessed he would stay in, and if Ma would deal him a queen he would have a full hand. I don't know what Pa meant, but he plays draw poker sometimes. Anyway there was eleven people came including the minister, and after they had talked about the neighbors a spell, and Ma had showed the women a new tidy she had worked for the heathen, with a motto on it which Pa had taught her: 'A contrite heart beats a bob-tailed flush,'—and Pa had talked to the men about a religious silver mine he was selling stock in, which he advised them as a friend to buy for the glory of the church, they all went in the back parlor and the minister lead in prayer. He got down on his knees right under the parrot's cage, and you'd a dide to see Polly hang on to the wires of the cage with one foot, and drop an apple core on the minister's head. Ma shook her handkerchief at Polly, and looked sassy, and Polly got up on the perch, and as the minister got warmed up and began to raise the roof, Polly said, 'O, dry up.' The minister had his eyes shut, but he opened one of them a little and looked at Pa. Pa was tickled at the parrot, but when the minister looked at Pa as though it was him that was making irreverent remarks, Pa was mad.

"The minister got to the 'amen,' and Polly shook hisself and said 'What you giving us?' and the minister got up and brushed the bird seed off his knees, and he looked mad. I thought Ma would sink with mortification, and I was sitting on a piano stool looking as pious as a Sunday school superintendent the Sunday before he skips out with the bank's funds; and Ma looked at me as though she thought it was me that had been tampering with the parrot. Gosh, I never said a word to that parrot, and I can prove it by my chum.

"Well, the minister asked one of the sisters if she wouldn't pray, and she wasn't engaged, so she said with pleasure, and she kneeled down, but she corked herself, cause she got one knee on a cast-iron dumb bell that I had been practising with. She said 'O my,' in a disgusted sort of a way, and then she began to pray for the reformation of the youth of the land, and asked for the spirit to descend on the household, and particularly on the boy that was such a care and anxiety to his parents, and just then Polly said 'O, pull down your vest.' Well, you'd a dide to see that woman look at me. The parrot cage was partly behind the window curtin, and they couldn't see it, and she thought it was me. She looked at Ma as though she was wondering why she didn't hit me with a poker, but she went on, and Polly said 'wipe off your chin,' and then the lady got through and got up, and told Ma it must be a great trial to have an idiotic child, and then Ma she was mad, and said it wasn't half so bad as it was to be a kleptomaniac, and then the woman got up and said she wouldn't stay no longer, and Pa said to me to take that parrot outdoors, and that seemed to make them all good natured again. Ma said to take the parrot and give it to the poor. I took the cage and pointed my finger at the parrot and it looked at the woman and said 'old catamaran,' and the woman tried to look pious and resigned, but she couldn't. As I was going out the door the parrot ruffed up his feathers and said 'Dammit, set 'em up,' and I hurried out with the cage for fear he would say something bad, and the folks all held up their hands and said it was scandalous. Say, I wonder if a parrot can go to hell with the rest of the community. Well, I put the parrot in the woodshed, and after they all had their innings, except Pa, who acted as umpire, the meeting broke up, and Ma says it is the last time she will have that gang at her house.

"That must have been where your Pa got his black eye," said the grocery man, as he charged the bunch of celery to the boy's Pa. "Did the minister hit him, or was it one of the sisters?"

"O, he didn't get his black eye at prayer meeting!" said the boy, as he took his mittens off the stove, and rubbed them to take the stiffening out. "It was from boxing. Pa told my chum and me that it was no harm to learn to box, cause we could defend ourselves, and he said he used to be a holy terror with the boxing gloves when he was a boy, and he has been giving us lessons. Well, he is no slouch, now I tell you, and handles himself pretty well for a church member. I read in the paper how Zack Chandler played it on Conkling by getting Jem Mace, the prize fighter, to knock him silly, and I asked Pa if he wouldn't let me bring a poor boy who had no father to teach him boxing, to our house to learn to box, and Pa said certainly, fetch him along. He said he would be glad to do anything for a poor orphan. So I went down in the Third ward and got an Irish boy by the name of Duffy, who can knock the socks off any boy in the ward. He fit a prize fight once. It would have made you laugh to see Pa telling him how to hold his hands and how to guard his face. He told Duffy not to be afraid, but strike right out and hit for keeps. Duffy said he was afraid Pa would get mad if he hit him, and Pa said, 'nonsense, boy, knock me down if you can, and I will laugh ha! ha!' Well, Duffy he hauled back and gave Pa one on the nose, and another in both eyes, and cuffed him on the ear and punched him in the stomach, and lammed him in the mouth and made his teeth bleed, and then he gave him a side winder in both eyes, and Pa pulled off his boxing gloves and grabbed a chair, and we adjourned and went down stairs as though there was a panic. I haven't seen Pa since. Was his eye very black?"

"Black, I should say so," said the grocery man. "And his nose seemed to be trying to look into his left ear. He was at the market buying beefsteak to put on it."

"O, beefsteak is no account. I must go and see him and tell him that an oyster is the best thing for a black eye. Well, I must go. A boy has a pretty hard time running a house the way it should be run," and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery: "Frowy Butter a Speshulty."

CHRISTMAS TREES.

There is too much dress parade about Christmas. Too many Christmas trees where rich children get club skates, and gold napkin rings, and poor children get pop corn strung on a string, and cornucopias full of peppermint candy.

THE BOB-TAILED BADGER.

The last legislature, having nothing else to do, passed a law providing for a change in the coat-of-arms of the State. There was no change particularly, except to move the plows and shovels around a little, put on a few more bars of pig lead, put a new-fashioned necktie on the sailor who holds the rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner's breeches into his boots a little further, and amputate the tail of the badger. We do not care for the other changes, as they were only intended to give the engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legislature amputates the tail of the badger, the emblem of the Democratic party, that crawls into a hole and pulls the hole in after him, it touches us in our patriotism.

The badger, as nature made him, is a noble bird, and though he resembles a skunk too much to be very proud of, they had no right to cut off his tail and stick it up like a sore thumb. As it is now the new comer to our Garden of Eden will not know whether our emblem is a Scotch terrier, smelling into the archives of the State for a rat, or a defalcation, or a sic semper Americanus scunch. We do not complain that the sailor with a Pinafore shirt on, on the new coat-of-arms, is made to resemble Senator Cameron, or that the miner looks like Senator Sawyer. These things are of minor importance, but the docking of that badger's tail, and setting it up like a bob-tail horse, is an outrage upon every citizen of the State, and when the Democrats get into power, that tail shall be restored to its normal condition if it takes all the blood and treasure in the State, and this work of the Republican incendiaries shall be undone. The idea of Wisconsin appearing among the galaxy of States with a bob-tailed badger is repugnant to all our finer feelings.

TERROR IN CHURCH.

A ridiculous scene occurred at Palmyra, the other day. The furnace in the basement of the church is reached by a trap door, which is right beside the pulpit. There was a new preacher there from abroad, and he did not know anything about the trap door, and the sexton went down there to fix the fire, before the new minister arrived. The minister had just got warmed up in his sermon, and was picturing to his hearers hell in all its heat. He had got excited and told of the lake of burning brimstone below, where the devil was the stoker, and where the heat was ten thousand times hotter than a political campaign, and where the souls of the wicked would roast, and fry, and stew until the place froze over.

Wiping the perspiration from his face, he said, pointing, to the floor, "Ah, my friends, look down into that seething, burning lake, and—" Just at this point the trap door raised a little, and the sexton's face, with coal smut all over it, appeared. He wanted to come up and hear the sermon.



If hell had broke loose, the new minister could not have been more astonished. He stepped back, grasped his manuscript, and was just about to jump from the pulpit, when a deacon on the front seat said, "It's all right, brother; he has only been down below to see about the fire." The sexton came up and shut down the trap door, the color came back to the face of the minister, and he went on, though the incident seemed to take the tuck all out of him.

A traveling man who happened to be at the church tells us that he knows the minister was scared, for he sweat so that the perspiration run right down on the carpet and made a puddle as though a dipper of water had been tipped over there. The minister says he was not scared, but we don't see how he could help it.

FISH HATCHING IN WISCONSIN.

I would suggest that you permit the subject of the artificial hatching of fish to engage your attention, and that you appropriate several dollars to purchase whale's eggs, vegetable oysters and mock turtle seeds. The hatching of fish is easy, and any man can soon learn it; and it is a branch of industry that many who are now out of employment, owing to circumstances beyond their control, will be glad to avail themselves of. How, I ask you, could means better be adapted to the ends than for the retiring officers of our State to go to setting on fish eggs?

TRAINS WITHOUT CONDUCTORS.

Since the introduction of the patent air brake on passenger trains, by which brakemen have been dispensed with, a number of patent right men have been studying up some contrivance to do away with conductors. All have failed except one, and that fortunate inventor is Col. Johnson, of the Railroad Eating House, Milwaukee. He has been engaged for two years on this patent, and has got it so near completed that he has filed a caveat at the Patent Office, and as his rights are secured, it can do no harm to describe the invention, as it is destined to work quite a revolution in the railroad business. It has been Col. Johnson's idea that an arrangement could be made so that an engineer of a train could have the whole train under his charge, to stop it, start it, collect fares, and bounce impecunious passengers, from his position on the engine, and do it all by steam, wind and water. A series of pneumatic tubes run from the door of each car to the engine, with speaking tubes. A passenger gets on the platform, and through the speaking tube asks the engineer what the fare is to such a place. The answer is returned, the fare is put in the hopper of the pneumatic tube, it goes to the engineer, he pulls a string, the door flies open and the passenger enters. Not the least important part of the machinery is the patent "aeolian bouncer," as it is called. A pair of ice tongs are placed so as to grasp the passenger by the seat of the pants or the polonaise, as the case may be, when he or she gets on the platform. These tongs are connected with the air brakes, in such a manner that by the engineer's touching a spring the whole force of the compressed air takes possession of the tongs, and the passenger is snatched bald-headed, metaphorically speaking. For instance, a passenger gets on the platform at Portage, and the ice tongs grasp him or her securely. If he or she pays the fare, the door is opened, the tongs release their hold, and the person is allowed to enter. But if the engineer should find that they had no money, or that their pass had run out, and they were trying to beat their way, he would pull the string and they would be lifted back on the depot steps and stood on their heads, raised in the air and made to see stars. Col. Johnson has been offered a fabulous sum for his patent, but he has not decided whether to sell or lease it. A trial trip was made at Milwaukee, the other day, and though the machine was not perfect, the experiment was not altogether a failure. A car was arranged with the apparatus, and went out to the Soldier's Home. Col. Johnson and a number of prominent railroad men were on board. They got a veteran soldier and a Polack waman to allow the machine to experiment on them. The machine took hold of the soldier and the engineer jerked. The man had one leg torn off, and the seat of his overcoat was ruined. He wouldn't try again, so they let the woman step on the platform. The engineer turned it the wrong way, and the car seemed full of compressed air, and a smell of limberger cheese pervaded the premises. When the smoke cleared off the woman was not to be found. After voting the machine a success the party started for Milwaukee. On nearing the city a pair of wooden shoes were seen in the air coming down, and they lit in the the canal by the tannery. A pair of corsets struck on Plankinton's packing house, and sections of spinal cord, and one leg of a pair of red drawers came down on the Soldier's home, and hair was found on the top of the car. It is thought the engineer loaded the air bouncer too heavy, and that it kicked. However, Col. Johnson was not discouraged, and will soon have his patent on all cars. The husband of the Polack woman wanted Johnson to pay him three dollars, but he said he didn't want to buy the woman. All he wanted was to hire her, anyway. Col. Johnson is a great inventor. It was he that invented the stomach pump, and the automatic candle enunciator, for awakening guests in the night to take early trains. The latter he sold to Mr. Williams, of Prairie du Chien, for a large amount and took his pay in trade.

RAISING ELEPHANTS.

Why not go to raising elephants? A good elephant will sell for eight thousand dollars. A pair of elephants can be bought by a community of farmers pooling their issues and getting a start, and in a few years every farm can be a menagerie of it own, and every year we can rake in from eight to twenty-four thousand dollars from the sale of surplus elephants. It may be said that elephants are hearty feeders, and that they would go through an ordinary farmer in a short time. Well, they can be turned out into the highway to browse, and earn their own living. This elephant theory is a good one, and any man that is good on figures can sit down and figure up a profit in a year sufficient to go into bankruptcy.

THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE.

A justice of the peace at Menasha, wanted to kill Pratt, the editor of the Press. The matter has been compromised, however. Pratt got the justice cornered up, and delivered one of the speeches to him that he delivered during the campaign last fall, and the justice got on his knees and said, "Pratt, this thing is all right, I surrender."

A TRYING SITUATION.

It was along in the winter, and the prominent church members were having a business meeting in the basement of the church to devise ways and means to pay for the pulpit furniture. The question of an oyster sociable had been decided, and they got to talking about oysters, and one old deaconess asked a deacon if he didn't think raw oysters would go further at a sociable, than stewed oysters.



He said he thought raw oysters would go further, but they wouldn't be as satisfying. And then he went on to tell how far a raw oyster went once with him. He said he was at a swell dinner party with a lady on each side of him, and he was trying to talk to both of them, or carry on two conversations, on two different subjects at the same time.

They had some shell oysters, and he took up one on a fork—a large, fat one—and was about to put it in his mouth, when the lady on his left called his attention, and when the cold fork struck his teeth, and no oyster on it, he felt as though it had escaped, but he made no sign. He went on talking with the lady as though nothing had happened. He glanced down at his shirt bosom, and was at once on the trail of the oyster, though the insect had got about two minutes start of him. It had gone down his vest under the waistband of his clothing, and he was powerless to arrest its progress.

He said he never felt how powerless he was until he tried to grab that oyster by placing his hand on his person, outside his clothes; then, as the oyster slipped around from one place to another, he felt that man was only a poor, weak creature.

The oyster, he observed, had very cold feet, and the more he tried to be calm and collected, the more the oyster seemed to walk around among his vitals.

He says he does not know whether the ladies noticed the oyster when it started on its travels or not, but he thought, as he leaned back and tried to loosen up his clothing, so it would hurry down toward his shoes, that they winked at each other, though they might have been winking at something else.

The oyster seemed to be real spry until it got out of reach, and then it got to going slow as the slikery covering wore off, and by the time it had worked into his trousers leg, it was going very slow, though it remained cold to the last, and he hailed the arrival of that oyster into the heel of his stocking with more delight than he did the raising of the American flag over Vicksburg, after the long siege.

THE GIDDY GIRLS QUARREL.

A dispatch from Brooklyn states that at the conclusion of a performance at the theatre, Fanny Davenport's wardrobe was attached by Anna Dickinson and the remark is made that Fanny will contest the matter. Well, we should think she would. What girl would sit down silently and allow another to attach her wardrobe without contesting? It is no light thing for an actress to have her wardrobe attached after the theatre is out. Of course Fanny could throw something over her, a piece of scenery, or a curtain, and go to her hotel, but how would she look? Miss Davenport always looked well with her wardrobe on, but it may have been all in the wardrobe. Without a wardrobe she may look very plain and unattractive.

Anna Dickinson has done very wrong. She has struck Fanny in a vital part. An actress with a wardrobe is one of the noblest works of nature. She is the next thing to an honest man, which is the noblest work, though we do not say it boastingly. We say she is next to an honest man, with a wardrobe, but if she has no wardrobe it is not right. However, we will change the subject before it gets too deep for us.

Now, the question is, what is Anna Dickinson going to do with Fanny's wardrobe? She may think Fanny's talent goes with it, but if she will carefully search the pockets she will find that Fanny retains her talent, and has probably hid it under a bushel, or an umbrella, or something, before this time. Anna cannot wear Fanny's wardrobe to play on the stage, because she is not bigger than a banana, while Fanny is nearly six feet long, from tip to tip. If Anna should come out on a stage with the Davenport wardrobe, the boys would throw rolls of cotton batting at her.

Fanny's dress, accustomed to so much talent, would have to be stuffed full of stuff. There would be room enough in Fanny's dress, if Anna had it on, as we remember the two, to put in a feather bed, eleven rolls of cotton batting, twelve pounds of bird seed, four rubber air cushions, two dozen towels, two brass bird cages, a bundle of old papers, a sack of bran and a bale of hay. That is, in different places. Of course all this truck wouldn't go in the dress in any one given locality. If Anna should put on Fanny's dress, and have it filled up so it would look any way decent, and attempt to go to Canada, she would be arrested for smuggling.

Why, if Dickinson should put on a pair of Davenport's stockings, now for instance, it would be necessary to get out a search warrant to find her. She could pin the tops of them at her throat with a brooch, and her whole frame would not fill one stocking half as well as they have been filled before being attached, and Anna would look like a Santa Claus present of a crying doll, hung on to a mantel piece.

Fanny Davenport is one of the handsomest and splendidest formed women on the American stage, and a perfect lady, while Dickinson, who succeeds to her old clothes through the law, is small, not handsome, and a quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store.

THE UNIVERSAL OBJECT.

The object that every man has in view, whether he be farmer, mechanic, preacher, editor, or tramp, is to make money.

THE MISTAKE ABOUT IT.

There is nothing that is more touching than the gallantry of men, total strangers, to a lady who has met with an accident. Any man who has a heart in him, who sees a lady whose apparel has become disarranged in such a manner that she cannot see it, will, though she be a total stranger, tell her of her misfortune, so she can fix up and not be stared at. But sometimes these efforts to do a kindly action are not appreciated, and men get fooled.

This was illustrated at Watertown last week. People have no doubt noticed that one of the late fashions among women is to wear at the bottom of the dress a strip of red, which goes clear around. To the initiated it looks real nice, but a man who is not posted in the fashions would swear that the woman's petticoat was dropping off, and if she was not notified, and allowed to fix it, she would soon be in a terrible fix on the street.

It was a week ago Monday that a lady from Oshkosh was at Watertown on a visit, and she wore a black silk dress with a red strip on the bottom. As she walked across the bridge Mr. Calvin Cheeney, a gentleman whose heart is in the right place, saw what he supposed would soon be a terrible accident, which would tend to embarrass the lady, so he stepped up to her in the politest manner possible, took off his hat and said:

"Excuse me, madame, but I think your wearing apparel is becoming disarranged. You might step right into Clark's, here, and fix it," and he pointed to the bottom of her dress.

She gave him a look which froze his blood, and shaking her dress out she went on. He said it was the last time he would ever try to help a woman in distress.

She sailed along down to a grocery store and stopped to look at some grapes, when the practiced eye of Hon. Peter Brook saw that something was wrong. To think is to act with Peter, and he at once said:

"Miss, your petticoat seems to be dropping off. You can go in the store and get behind that box of codfish and fix it if you want to."

Now that was a kind thing for Peter to do, and an act that any gentleman might be proud of, but he was amazed at her when she told him to mind his own business, and she would attend to her own petticoat, and she marched off just a trifle mad.

She went into the postoffice to mail a postal card, just as Mr. Moak, the postmaster, came out of his private office with Hon. L.B. Caswell, the congressman. Mr. Moak, without the aid of his glasses, saw that there was liable to be trouble, so he asked Caswell to excuse him a moment, and turning to the delivery window where she was asking the clerk what time the mail came in, he said:

"I beg a thousand pardons, madame. It ill becomes a stranger to speak to one so fair without an introduction, but I believe that I am not violating the civil service rules laid down by Mr. Hayes for the guidance of postmasters when I tell you, lady, that something has broke loose and that the red garment that you fain would hide from the gaze of the world has asserted itself and appears to the naked eye about two chains and three links below your dress. I am going abroad, to visit Joe Lindon, the independent candidate for sheriff, and you can step into the back office and take a reef in it."

He did not see the look of fire in her eyes as he went out, because he was not looking at her eye. She passed out, and Doc Spaulding, who has got a heart in him as big as a box car, saw it, and touching his broad brimmed felt hat he said, in a whisper:

"Madame, you better drop into a millinery store and fasten up your—"

But she passed him on a run, and was just going into a hardware store, with her hand on her pistol pocket, when Jule Keyes happened along. Now, Jule would consider himself a horse thief if he should allow a woman to go along the street with anything the matter with her clothes, and he not warn her of the consequences, so he stopped and told her that she must excuse him, a perfect stranger, for mentioning her petticoat, but the fact was that it was coming off.



By this time the woman was mad. She bought a pistol and started for the depot, firmly resolved to kill the first man that molested her. She did not meet anybody until she arrived at the Junction, and she sat down in the depot to rest before the train came.

Pierce, the hotel man, is one of the most noticin' persons anywhere, and she hadn't been seated a York minute before his eye caught the discrepancy in her apparel.

He tried to get the telegraph operator and the expressman to go and tell her about it, but they wouldn't, so he went and took a seat near her.

"It is a warm day, madame," said Pierce, looking at the red strip at the bottom of her dress.

She drew her pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Pierce, who was trembling in every leg, and said:

"Look-a-here, you young cuss. I have had half a dozen grown persons down town tell me my petticoat was coming off, and I have stood it because I thought they were old enough to know what they were talking about, but when it comes to boys of your age coming around thinking they know all about women's clothes it is too much, and the shooting is going to commence."

Mr. Pierce made one bound and reached the door, and then got behind a white greyhound and waited for her to go away, which she soon did. As she was stepping on the car the conductor, Jake Sazerowski, said to her:

"Your apparel, madame, seems to be demoralized," but she rushed into the car, and was seen no more.

Since then these gentlemen have all learned that the fashion calls for a red strip at the bottom of a dress, and they will make no more mistakes. But they were all serious enough, and their interference was prompted by pure kindness of heart, and not from any wicked thoughts.

A NEW SPARKING SCHEME.

A number of fathers who have daughters, have formed a society, the object of which is to charge young men who visit the girls, for meals, gas, wear and tear of furniture, etc. There has been so much sparking going on which did not mean business, that the organization has seemed necessary.

EFFECTS OF MINERAL WATER.

A woman from Milwaukee, stopping at Sparta for the summer, had a serious accident the other day. She had her dress pinned back so tight that the exclamation point where she was vaccinated on the left arm was plainly visible, and as she stooped over at the artesian well to dip up a cup full of physic, a little dog belonging to a lady from Pilot Knob took hold of her striped stocking and shook it, thinking it was a blue racer. The lady was overcome with heat and sank down on the damp ground, and the result was congestion of the dog, for when she got up she kicked that dog over the Court house and sprained her stocking. It is said that beautiful and healthful summer resort is fast filling up and everybody swears it is the most enjoyable place on the continent. It is certainly the cheapest for us La Crosse folks to go. We don't know of a place where, for the money invested, one can have so much fun and get so much health. You can leave La Crosse at 5:45, and arrive at Sparta at 6:20, after a delightful ride of thirty miles, and you will enjoy a race, your train beating the Northwestern train, and running like lightning. If you have a pass, or sit on the hind platform, it will cost you nothing. You can walk down town, at small expense. You want to take supper before leaving home, if economy is what you are seeking in addition to health. Go to Condit, at the Warner House, and talk as though you were looking for a place to send your family, and he will hitch up and drive you all over town. Tell Doc. Nichols you never tried a Turkish bath, but that you are troubled with hypochondria and often wish you were dead, and that if you were sure the baths would help you, you would come down and take them regular. He will put you through for nothing, and give you a cigar. Then you can get a tooth pick at Condit's and put your thumb under your vest and go to the springs and talk loud about railroad stocks and bonds and speculating in wheat. (It takes two to do it up right. Frank Hatch and the writer are going down some night to "do" the watering place). Then you can swell around till half past ten, and sneak off to the depot on foot and come home, and your pocket book will be just as empty as when you started, unless you get a subscriber, and you will have added bloom to your cheek, and had a high old time, and next winter you can talk about the delightful time you passed at Sparta last summer during the heated term.

Let's get up a party and go down some night.

WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS.

What the country needs is a melon from which the incendiary ingredients have been removed. It seems to me that by proper care, when the melon is growing on the vines, the cholera morbus can be decreased, at least, the same as the cranberry has been improved, by cultivation. The experiment of planting homeopathic pills in the hill with the melon has been tried, but homeopathy, while perhaps good in certain cases, does not seem to reach the seat of disease in the watermelon. What I would advise, and the advice is free to all, is that a porous plaster be placed upon watermelons, just as they are begining to ripen, with a view to draw out the cholera morbus. A mustard plaster might have the same effect, but the porous plaster seems to me to be the article to fill a want long felt. If, by this means, a breed of watermelon can be raised that will not strike terror to the heart of the consumer, this agricultural address will not have been delivered in vain.

THE MAN FROM DUBUQUE.

Last week, a young man from the country west of here came in on the evening train and walked up to Grand avenue, with a fresh looking young woman hanging on to one handle of a satchel while he held the other. They turned into the Plankinton House, and with a wild light in his eye the man went to the book and registered his name and that of the lady with him.

While the clerk was picking out a couple of rooms that were near together, the man looked around at the colored man who had the satchel, and as the clerk said, "Show the gentleman to No 65 and the lady to 67," he said, "Hold on, 'squire! One room will do."

On being shown to the room, the bridegroom came right out with the bell boy and appeared at the office. Picking out a benevolent looking gentleman, with a good place to raise hair on his head, who was behind the counter, the groom said:

"Say, can a man enjoy religion in this house?"

Mr. White said a man could if he brought it with him. They had none on hand to issue out to guests, but they never interfered with those who had it when they arrived.

"Why," says the manager of the house, "has anybody interfered with your devotions here?"

"No, not here," said the man, wiping his forehead with a red handkerchief. "But they have at Dubuque. I'll tell you how it was. I was married a couple of days ago, and night before last I put up at a Dubuque hotel. My wife never had been married before any at all, and she is timid, and thinks everybody is watching us, and making fun of us! She jumps at the slightest sound.

"Well, we went to our room in the afternoon, and she began to cry, and said if she wasn't married she never would be the longest day she lived. I sort of put my arm around her, and was just telling her that everybody had to get married, when there was a knock on the door, and she jumped more than thirty feet.

"You see that finger. Well, a pin in her belt stuck clear through, and came near making me faint away. I held my finger in my mouth, and telling her the house was not on fire, I went to the door and there was a porter there who wanted to know if I wanted any more coal on the fire. I drove him away, and sat down in a big rocking chair with my wife in my lap, and was stroking her hair and telling her that if she would forgive me for marrying I never would do so again, and trying to make her feel more at home, when there came another knock at the door, and she jumped clear across the room and knocked over a water pitcher.

"This seal ring on my finger caught in her frizzes and I'll be cussed if the whole top of her head didn't come off. I was a little flurried and went to the door, and a chambermaid was there with an armful of towels and she handed me a couple and went off. My wife came into camp again, and began to cry and accuse me of pulling her hair, when I went up to her and put my arm around her waist, and was just going to kiss her, just as any man would be justified in kissing his wife under the circumstances, when she screamed murder and fell against the bureau.

"I looked around and the door had opened, and there was a colored man coming into the room with a kerosene lamp, and he chuckled and said he begged my pardon. Now, I am a man that don't let my temper get away with me, but as it was three hours before dark I didn't see what was the use of a lamp, and I told him to get out of there. Before 6 o'clock that evening there had been twenty raps at the door, and we got sick. My wife said she would not stay in that house for a million dollars. So we started for Milwaukee.



"I tried to get a little sleep on the cars, but every little while a conductor would wake me up and roll me over in the seat to look at my ticket, and brakemen would run against my legs in the aisle of the car, and shout the names of stations till I was sorry I ever left home. Now, I want to have rest and quietude. Can I have it here?"

The manager told him to go to his room, and if he wanted any coal or ice water to ring for it, and if anybody knocked at his door without being sent for, to begin shooting bullets through the door. That settled it, and when the parties returned to Iowa they said this country was a mighty sight different from Dubuque.

A PLEA FOR THE BULL HEAD.

The late meeting of the State Fish Commissioners at Milwaukee was an important event, and the discussions the wise men indulged in will be valuable additions to the literature of the country, and future readers of profane history will rise up and call them blessed. It seems that the action of the Milwaukee common council in withdrawing the use of the water works from the commissioners, will put a stop to the hatching of whitefish. This is as it should be. The white fish is an aristocratic bird, that will not bite a hook, and the propagation of this species of fish is wholly in the interest of wealthy owners of fishing tugs, who have nets. By strict attention to business they can catch all the whitefish out of the lake a little faster than the State machine can put them in. Poor people cannot get a smell of whitefish. The same may be said of brook trout. While they will bite a hook, it requires more machinery to catch them than ordinary people can possess without mortgaging a house. A man has got to have a morocco book of expensive flies, a fifteen dollar bamboo jointed rod, a three dollar trout basket with a hole mortised in the top, a corduroy suit made in the latest style, top boots of the Wellington pattern, with red tassels in the straps, and a flask of Otard brandy in a side pocket. Unless a man is got up in that style, a speckled trout will see him in Chicago, first, and then it won't bite. The brook trout is even more aristocratic than the whitefish, and should not be propagated at public expense.