And this goes by the name of religion!

There should be honor among ministers. Both of the principals in this suit should be bounced. If the charges are true, Carhart should emigrate. If they are not true, Haddock should emigrate.



MUSIC ON THE WATERS.

Our readers have no doubt noticed in the papers that the Goodrich Transportation Company had secured a band from Waupun to make music on the boats of that line between Milwaukee and Chicago this summer. Well, there is trouble going on in consequence. Mr. Hurson, of the Goodrich line, entrusted the organization of the band to Mr. Nick Jarvis, of Waupun, a gentleman whose reputation as a scientific pounder of the bass drum has received encomiums from the crowned heads of Oshkosh and Hazen's cheese factory.

Having such confidence in Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Hurson gave him a roving commission, with authority to secure the best talent in the known world. He organized the band, and then it occurred to Mr. Jarvis that the musicians had always been accustomed to playing on land, and they might be sick on the water, so he took measures to accustom them to a sea-faring life before leaving Waupun. He got them to practicing in a building, and hired some boys to throw water up on the side of the house, to see if they would be seasick. The band fellows would have stood the sea first-rate, only the villains who had been hired to throw the water used a lot of dirty stuff they found back of a hotel, which smelled powerful.

A number of the band members felt the swash of the waves against the bulwarks of the house, and smelled what they supposed to be salt sea air, and they leaned out of the windows and wanted to throw up their situations, but a German in the party had a lemon and some cheese, which was given around to taste and smell, and they came out of it all right.

Mr. Jarvis' next idea, to accustom the prairie sailors to the vasty deep, was to take them out on the mill pond at Waupun in a skiff. They got out in the middle of the pond, and were playing a selection from the opera of "Solid Muldoon," when a boy who had slipped into the boat with a fish-pole, got a bite from a bull-head, which caused the vessel to roll, and the utmost confusion prevailed. Ordering the snare drum player to "cut away the main bob-stay, and belay the cornet," Mr. Jarvis took the bass drum between his teeth and jumped overboard, followed by the band, and they waded ashore.

On Monday last the band arrived in Milwaukee and reported on board the Goodrich steamer, in the river, ready for business. They were told to go as they pleased until evening, when they would be expected to play before the boat started, and also on the trip to Chicago. The men sat around on deck all the afternoon, and smelled of the river. It smelled different from any salt water they ever snuffed, and they wanted to go home.

At seven o'clock the band played a few tunes as the boat lay in the river, and finally she let go her ropes and steamed down toward the lake, the band whooping it up to the "Blue Danube." As the boat struck blue water, and her bow raised out about sixteen feet and began to jump, the cornet player stopped to pour water out of his horn, and lean against a post. He was as pale as death, and the tuba player stopped to see what ailed the cornet player, and to lean over the railing to see a man down stairs. The baritone had eaten something that did not agree with him, and he stopped playing and laid down in a life boat, the alto became cold around the extremities and quit playing and went to the smoke stack to warm himself, the b-flat began to perspire and quit playing and fanned himself with the cymbals, and all of the horn blowers were e-flat and b-flat on the deck in less than two minutes.

The captain noticed that there was some discrepancy in the music and came on deck to see about it. Wading through the brass horns he came up to where the band had been, and found Nick Jarvis beating blazes out of the bass drum and Harve Hill carving the Blue Danube out of the snare drum, and that was all the music there was. The captain asked Jarvis what kind of a riot that was, and he told him it was the best they could do under the circumstances.

Restoratives were applied to the members, and they braced up enough to start in on "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," but they couldn't play it through, owing to dyspepsia. The captain got them into the cabin to play for the young folks to dance, but the only thing they could play without getting sick was "Home Again, from a Foreign Shore," and the bass drum had to do it all. The horn blowers were out looking at the starlight, leaning over the railing, as the stars were reflected in the water.

At Racine it took some time to load, owing to rough water, and in the midst of it all a pale man, with a snare drum on his arm, rolled up against the captain. It was Harve Hill. He held his hand over his mouth and in a voice choked with emotion and fried potatoes he said:

"Captain, I am a poor man, but if you will land this boat and save me, I will give you nine dollars."

The captain decided to dispense with the music the rest of the night, and let the band get on its sea legs.

At Chicago, the next morning, Jarvis, who had got a little sick, too, tried to induce the captain to allow the band to walk back to Milwaukee on the shore, beside the boat. He said they could play any tune that ever was played, on land, and the passengers could hear it just as well, if the boat kept alongside of the band. The captain wouldn't let them off, and they have been kept on the boat all the week, so that now they are old sailors, and can play all right. But it was pretty tough the first night. Waupun is organizing a reception for the band when it comes home.



WOMAN-DOZING A DEMOCRAT.

A fearful tale comes to us from Columbus. A party of prominent citizens of that place took a trip to the Dells of Wisconsin one day last week. It was composed of ladies and gentlemen of both political parties, and it was hoped that nothing would occur to mar the pleasure of the excursion.

When the party visited the Dells, Mr. Chapin, a lawyer of Democratic proclivities, went out upon a rock overhanging a precipice, or words to that effect, and he became so absorbed in the beauty of the scene that he did not notice a Republican lady who left the throng and waltzed softly up behind him. She had blood in her eye and gum in her mouth, and she grasped the lawyer, who is a weak man, by the arms, and hissed in his ear:

"Hurrah for Garfield, or I will plunge you headlong into the yawning gulf below!"

It was a trying moment. Chapin rather enjoyed being held by a woman, but not in such a position that, if she let go her hold to spit on her hands, he would go a hundred feet down, and become as flat as the Greenback party, and have to be carried home in a basket.

In a second he thought over all the sins of his past life, which was pretty quick work, as anybody will admit who knows the man. He thought of how he would be looked down upon by Gabe Bouck, and all the fellows, if it once got out that he had been frightened into going back on his party.

He made up his mind that he would die before he would hurrah for Garfield, but when the merciless woman pushed him towards the edge of the rock, and said, "Last call! Yell, or down you go!" he opened his mouth and yelled so they heard it in Kilbourn City:

"Hurrah for Garfield! Now lemme go!"

Though endowed with more than ordinary eloquence, no remarks that he had ever made before brought the applause that this did. Everybody yelled, and the woman smiled as pleasantly as though she had not crushed the young life out of her victim, and left him a bleeding sacrifice on the altar of his country, but when she had realized what she had done her heart smote her, and she felt bad.

Chapin will never be himself again. From that moment his proud spirit was broken, and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud. He leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself with a skimmer. When the party had spread the lunch on the ground and gathered around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them mechanically, but his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is not enough of him left for a quorum.

Friends rallied around him, passed the pickles, and drove the antmires out of a sandwich, and handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he either passed or turned it down. He said he couldn't take a trick. Later on, when the lemonade was brought on, the flies were skimmed off of some of it, and a little colored water was put in to make it look inviting, but his eyes were sot. He said they couldn't fool him. After what had occurred, he didn't feel as though any Democrat was safe. He expected to be poisoned on account of his politics, and all he asked was to live to get home.

Nothing was left undone to rally him, and cause him to forget the fearful scene through which he had passed. Only once did he partially come to himself, and show an interest in worldly affairs, and that was when it was found that he had sat down on some raspberry jam with his white pants on. When told of it, he smiled a ghastly smile, and said they were all welcome to his share of the jam.

They tried to interest him in conversation by drawing war maps with three-tined forks on the jam, but he never showed that he knew what they were about until Mr. Moak, of Watertown, took a brush, made of cauliflower preserved in mustard, and shaded the lines of the war map on Mr. Cha-pin's trousers, which Mr. Butterfield had drawn in the jam. Then his artistic eye took in the incongruity of the colors, and he gasped for breath, and said:

"Moak, that is played out. People will notice it."

But he relapsed again into semi-unconsciousness, and never spoke again, not a great deal, till he got home.

He has ordered that there be no more borrowing of sugar and drawings of tea back and forth between his house and that of the lady who broke his heart, and he has announced that he will go without saurkraut all winter rather than borrow a machine for cutting cabbage of a woman that would destroy the political prospects of a man who had never done a wrong in his life.

He has written to the chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee to suspend judgment on his case, until he can explain how it happened that a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat hurrahed for Garfield.



A LIVELY TRAIN LOAD.

Last week a train load of insane persons were removed from the Oshkosh Asylum to the Madison Asylum. As the train was standing on the sidetrack at Watertown Junction it created considerable curiosity. People who have ever passed Watertown Junction have noticed the fine old gentleman who comes into the car with a large square basket, peddling popcorn. He is one of the most innocent and confiding men in the world. He is honest, and he believes that everybody else is honest.

He came up to the depot with his basket, and seeing the train he asked Pierce, the landlord there, what train it was. Pierce, who is a most diabolical person, told the old gentleman that it was a load of members of the legislature and female lobbyists going to Madison. With that beautiful confidence which the pop corn man has in all persons, he believed the story, and went in the car to sell pop corn.

Stopping at the first seat, where a middle-aged lady was sitting alone, the pop corn man passed out his basket and said, "fresh pop corn." The lady took her foot down off the stove, looked at the man a moment with eyes glaring and wild, and said, "It is—no, it cannot be—and yet it is me long lost Duke of Oshkosh," and she grabbed the old man by the necktie with one hand and pulled him down into the seat, and began to mow away corn into her mouth. The pop corn man blushed, looked at the rest of the passengers to see if they were looking, and said, as he replaced the necktie knot from under his left ear and pushed his collar down, "Madame, you are mistaken. I have never been a duke in Oshkosh. I live here at the Junction." The woman looked at him as though she doubted his statement, but let him go.

He proceeded to the next seat, when a serious looking man rose up and bowed; the pop corn man also bowed and smiled as though he might have met him before. Taking a paper of pop corn and putting it in his coat tail pocket, the serious man said, "I was honestly elected President of the United States in 1876, but was counted out by the vilest conspiracy that ever was concocted on the earth, and I believe you are one of the conspirators," and he spit on his hands and looked the pop corn man in the eye. The pop corn man said he never took any active part in politics, and had nothing to do with that Hayes business at all. Then the serious man sat down and began eating the pop corn, while two women on the other side of the car helped themselves to the corn in the basket.

The pop corn man held out his hand for the money, when a man two seats back came forward and shook hands with him, saying: "They told me you would not come, but you have come, Daniel, and now we will fight it out. I will take this razor, and you can arm yourself at your leisure." The man reached into an inside, pocket of his coat, evidently for a razor, when the pop corn man started for the door, his eyes sticking out two inches. Every person he passed took a paper of pop corn, one man grabbed his coat and tore one tail off, another took his basket away and as he rushed out on the platform the basket was thrown at his head, and a female voice said, "I will be ready when the carriage calls at 8."

As the old gentleman struck the platform and began to arrange his toilet he met Fitzgerald, the conductor, who asked him what was the matter. He said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the legislature, "but," says he, as he picked some pieces of paper collar out of the back of his neck, "if those people are not delegates to a democratic convention, then I have been peddling pop corn on this road ten years for nothing, and don't know my business." Fitz told him they were patients going to the Insane Asylum.

The old man thought it over a moment, and then he picked up a coupling pin and went looking for Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has not been out of the house since. This Pierce is the same man that lent us a runaway horse once.



HOW SHARPER THAN A HOUND'S TOOTH.

Years ago we swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own another dog. Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded setters and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the distemper and dog buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had been bereaved via dog misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of Janesville, has been bereaved on the nomination for attorney general. We could not look a pup in the face but it would get sick, and so we concluded never again to own a dog.

The vow has been religiously kept since. Men have promised us thousands of pups, but we have never taken them. One conductor has promised us at least seventy-five pups, but he has always failed to get us to take one. Dog lovers have set up nights to devise a way to induce us to accept a dog. We held out firmly until last week. One day we met Pierce, the Watertown Junction hotel man, and he told us he had a greyhound pup that was the finest bread dog—we think he said bread dog, though it might have been a sausage dog he said—anyway he told us it was blooded, and that when it grew up to be a man—that is, figuratively speaking—when it grew up to be a dog full size, it would be the handsomest canine in the Northwest.

We kicked on it, entirely, at first, but when he told us hundreds of men who had seen the pup had offered him thousands of dollars for it, but that he had rather give it to a friend than sell it to a stranger; we weakened, and told him to send it in.

Well—(excuse us while we go into a corner and mutter a silent remark)—it came in on the train Monday, and was taken to the barn. It is the confoundedest looking dog that a white man ever set eyes on. It is about the color of putty, and about seven feet long, though it is only six months old. The tail is longer than a whip lash, and when you speak sassy to that dog, the tail will begin to curl around under him, amongst his legs, double around over his neck and back over where the tail originally was hitched to the dog, and then there is tail enough left for four ordinary dogs.

It is the longest tail we have ever seen in one number. If that tail was cut up into ordinary tails, such as common dogs wear, there would be enough for all the dogs in the Seventh ward, with enough left for a white wire clothes line. When he lays down his tail curls up like a coil of telephone wire, and if you take hold of it and wring you can hear the dog at the central office. If that dog is as long in proportion, when he gets his growth, and his tail grows as much as his body does, the dog will reach from here to the Soldier's home.

His head is about as big as a graham gem, and runs down to a point not bigger than a cambric needle, while his ears are about as big as a thumb to a glove, and they hang down as though the dog didn't want to hear anything. How a head of that kind can contain brains enough to cause a dog to know enough to go in when it rains is a mystery. But he seems to be intelligent.

If a man comes along on the sidewalk, the dog will follow him off, follow him until he meets another man, and then he follows him till he meets another, and so on until he has followed the entire population. He is not an aristocratic dog, but will follow one person just as soon as another, and to see him going along the street, with his tail coiled up, apparently oblivious to every human sentiment, it is touching.

His legs are about the size of pipe stems, and his feet are as big as a base ball base. He wanders around, following a boy, then a middle aged man, then a little girl, then an old man, and finally, about meal time, the last person he follows seems to go by the barn and the dog wanders in and looks for a buffalo robe or a harness tug to chew. It does not cost anything to keep him, as he has only eaten one trotting harness and one fox skin robe since Monday, though it may not be right to judge of his appetite, as he may be a little off his feed.

Pierce said he would be a nice dog to run with a horse, or under a carriage. Why, bless you, he won't go within twenty feet of a horse, and a horse would run away to look at him; besides, he gets right under a carriage wheel, and when the wheel runs over him he complains, and sings Pinafore.

What under the sun that dog is ever going to be good for is more than we know. He is too lean and bony for sausage. A piece of that dog as big as your finger in a sausage would ruin a butcher. It would be a dead give away. He looks as though he might point game, if the game was brought to his attention, but he would be just as liable to point a cow. He might do to stuff and place in a front yard to frighten burglars. If a burglar wouldn't be frightened at that dog nothing would scare him.

Anyway, now we have got him, we will bring him up, though it seems as though he would resemble a truss bridge or a refrigerator car, as much as a dog, when he gets his growth. For fear he will follow off a wagon track we tie a knot in his tail. Parties who have never seen a very long dog can call at the barn about meal time and see him.



A SEWING MACHINE GIVEN TO THE BOSS GIRL.

In response to a request from W. T. Vankirk, George W. Peck presented the Rock County Agricultural Society with a sewing machine, to be given to the "boss combination girl" of Rock County. With the machine he sent the following letter, which explains his meaning of a "combination girl," etc.:

Milwaukee, June 7, 1881.

W. T. Vankirk—Dear Sir: Your letter, in reference to my giving some kind of a premium to somebody, at your County Fair, is received, and I have been thinking it over. I have brought my massive intellect to bear upon the subject, with the following result:

I ship you to-day, by express, a sewing machine, complete, with cover, drop leaf, hemmer, tucker, feller, drawers, and everything that a girl wants, except corsets and tall stockings. Now, I want you to give that to the best "combination girl" in Rock County, with the compliments of the Sun.

What I mean by a "combination," is one that in the opinion of your Committee has all the modern improvements, and a few of the old-fashioned faults, such as health, etc. She must be good-looking, that is, not too handsome, but just handsome enough. You don't want to give this machine to any female statue, or parlor ornament, who don't know how to play a tune on it, or who is as cold as a refrigerator car, and has no heart concealed about her person. Our girl, that is, our "Fair Girl," that takes this machine, must be "the boss." She must be jolly and good-natured, such a girl as would make the young man that married her think that Rock County was the next door to heaven, anyway. She must be so healthy that nature's roses will discount any preparation ever made by man, and so well-formed that nothing artificial is needed to—well, Van, you know what I mean.

You want to pick out a thoroughbred, that is, all wool, a yard wide—that is, understand me, I don't want the girl to be a yard wide, but just right. Your Committee don't want to get "mashed" on some ethereal creature whose belt is not big enough for a dog collar. This premium girl wants to be able to do a day's work, if necessary, and one there is no danger of breaking in two if her intended should hug her.

After your Committee have got their eyes on a few girls that they think will fill the bill, then they want to find out what kind of girls they are around their home. Find if they honor their fathers and their mothers, and are helpful, and care as much for the happiness of those around them as they do for their own. If you find one who is handsome as Venus—I don't know Venus, but I have heard that she takes the cake—I say, if you find one that is perfect in everything, but shirks her duties at home, and plays, "I Want to Be an Angel," on the piano, while her mother is mending her stockings, or ironing her "picnic skirts," then let her go ahead and be an angel as quick as she wants to, but don't give her the machine.. You catch the idea?

Find a girl who has the elements of a noble woman; one whose heart is so large that she has to wear a little larger corset than some, but one who will make her home happy, and who is a friend to all; one who would walk further to do a good deed, and relieve suffering, than she would to patronize an ice cream saloon; one who would keep her mouth shut a month before she would say an unkind word, or cause a pang to another. Let your Committee settle on such a girl, and she is as welcome to that machine as possible.

Now, Van, you ought to have a Committee appointed at once, and no one should know who the Committee is. They should keep their eyes out from now till the time of the Fair, and they should compare notes once in a while. You have got some splendid judges of girls there in Janesville, but you better appoint married men. They are usually more unbiased. They should not let any girl know that she is suspected of being the premium girl, until the judgment is rendered, so no one will be embarrassed by feeling that she is competing tor a prize.

Now, Boss, I leave the constitution and the girls in your hands; and if this premium is the means of creating any additional interest in your Fair, and making people feel good natured and jolly, I shall be amply repaid.

Your friend,

Geo. W. Peck.



DON'T APPRECIATE KINDNESS.

One of the members of the Humane Society, who lives in an aristocratic ward, had been annoyed at hearing sounds from a stable near his residence, which indicated that a boy who had charge of a horse was in the habit of pounding the animal vigorously every morning, while cleaning off the dirt. It seemed to the humane man that the boy must use a barrel stave or fence board to curry off the horse, and the way the animal danced around the barn was terrible.

It occurred every morning, and the humane man made up his mind that it was his duty to put a stop to it. He went to the barn one morning, just as the cotillion commenced. Looking through a knot hole he saw the horse tied so his head was away up to the top of the barn, so he could not use his teeth to defend himself. The boy stood with a curry comb in one hand and a piece of plank in the other, and he warmed the horse with both, and the animal kicked for all that was out.

The humane man thought this was the worst case of cruelty to animals that ever was, and he rapped for admission. The boy, covered with perspiration, horse tail, stable refuse and indignation, opened the door, and the humane man proceeded to read him a lecture about cruelty to dumb animals, called him a fiend in human form, and told him that kindness was what was necessary, instead of a club.

The boy couldn't get in a word edgeways for a while, but when the man had exhausted his talk the boy told him that kindness might work on ordinary horses, but this horse was the meanest animal in the world. He would bite and kick without any provocation, and the present owner couldn't sell him or give him away. He said that the only way he could be curried was to tie him up at both ends, and the only way he could be harnessed was to toss the harness on him with a pitch fork.

The horse, with his head tied up so high that he could not use it, looked down at the humane man with one eye filled with emotion—the other eye had been knocked out years ago—and seemed to be thanking the kind-hearted citizen for interfering in the matinee and causing hostilities to be suspended. The humane man was touched by the intelligent look of the horse, and insisted that the animal be untied and allowed its freedom. The boy said he didn't dare untie him, for he would kick the side of the barn out, but the man insisted that he should release the horse, and went up to his head to do so, when the boy went through the manure hole in the side of the barn.

What happened when the humane citizen untied the halter will perhaps never be definitely known, but no sooner had the boy struck the ground through the hole, than there was a sound of revelry in the barn, there came a yell through the crevices, there seemed to be a company of cavalry drilling on the barn floor, there was a sound as of cloth tearing, and then it appeared as though something was climbing up the inside of the barn, and after which the hind heels of the horse could be heard playing the snare drum on the manger. The boy roused the neighbors and they armed themselves and entered the barn. They found the horse in the stall, with its head where its tail should be, with its mouth full of pantaloons cloth, and kicking away as though its heart would break.

And the humane man, where, O, where was he? Ask of the winds that far around with fragments of hat and coat tail strewed the barn floor.

"Shoot the horse." said a faint voice from the upper part of the barn, and every eye was turned in that direction. The humane man was up there, clinging to a cross piece. He had evidently gone up the ladder which led to the hay loft, a little ahead of the horse, and as he clung to the cross piece, his coat tail gone, and the vital part of his pantaloons and some skin gone to that bourne from whence no pantaloons seat returns, his bald head covered with dust and cobwebs, he was a picture of meekness.

The crowd got the horse into another stall, head first, and put bars across, and the humane man came down from his perch. Seizing a barn shovel, and spitting on his hands, he asked his friends to wait and watch him curry off that horse just a minute for luck. He said he only wanted to live just long enough to maul every rib out of the animal, and if he was forgiven for interfering in somebody's else's business this time he would try and lead a different life in the future.

They put a horse blanket around his wounds and led him home, and he has given the boy five dollars to pound the horse an hour every morning for the next thirty days. You can't make that man believe that a horse has any intelligence.



RELIGION AND FISH.

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

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

It is said to be a beautiful sight to see a truly good man offering up supplications from under a wide-brimmed fishing hat, and as he talks of the worm that never, or hardly ever dies, red angle worms that have dug out of the piece of paper in which they were rolled up are crawling out of his vest pocket.

The good brothers compare notes of good places to do missionary work, where sinners are so thick you can knock them down with a club, and then they get boats and row to some place on the lake where a local liar has told them the fish are just sitting around on their haunches waiting for some one to throw in a hook.

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

These Sunday school people will have a nice time, and do a great amount of good, if the fish continue to bite, and they can go home with their hearts full of the grace of God, their stomachs full of fish, their teeth full of bones; and if they fall out of the boats, and their suspenders hold out, they may catch a basin full of eels in the basement of their pantaloons.

But we trust they will not try to compete with the local sports in telling fish stories. That would break up a whole Sunday school system.



A DOCTOR OF LAWS.

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

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

She did not tell him that she had been eating huckleberry pie, so he laid the coating on her tongue to some disease that was undermining her constitution. He put his ear on her chest and listened to the beating of her heart, and shook his head again.

He asked her if she had been exposed to any contagious disease. She didn't know what a contagious disease was, but on the hypothesis that he had reference to sparking, she blushed and said she had, but only two evenings, because John had only just got back from the woods where he had been chopping, and she had to sit up with him.

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

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

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

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



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 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 some one 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 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.



ADDICTED TO LIMBURG CHEESE.

During the investigation of Chief Kennedy one witness testified to something that ought to make it hot for the chief. When men stoop to do the things that Mr. Chapin testified to, an outraged public sentiment has got to step in. Mr. Chapin testified—and he is a man whose word is as good as our note—he said he met Kennedy in a street car, and his breath smelled of limburg cheese. That is enough. Carry his remains out.

Any man who will appear in a public place, among folks, with his breath smelling of limburg cheese, has got his opinion of us. It is simply damnable. We can see how a man who likes limburg cheese is liable, though he may have sworn off, to return to the mustard cup, and after the first taste, fill his skin full of cheese, arguing that one may as well die for an old sheep as a lamb.

It is a well known fact, agreed to by all scientists, that a single mouthful' will tarnish an otherwise virtuous breath as much as a whole cheese. One mouthful of cheese leads on to another, and we are prepared to believe that if the chief smelled of cheese at all, he was full of it.

Men cannot be too careful of cheese. If a man feels that he is going to commit the dastardly act of eating limburg cheese, he has time to go out to a glue factory, or a slaughter house, or the house of correction, or some other place whose offense is rank.

The desire to eat cheese does not come upon a man suddenly, like the desire to take a drink, or stand off a creditor, and he is not taken possession of by the demon of appetite and pulled to the nearest saloon by a forty horse power devil, as is the man who has the jim jams.

The cheese does its work more quietly. It whispers to him about 11 o'clock a. m., and says there is nothing like cheese. He stands it off, and again in the afternoon the cheese takes possession of him and leads him on step by step, by green fields, and yet he does not fall. But about 9 o'clock p. m. the air seems full of cheese, and he smells it wherever he goes, and finally, after resisting for ten hours, he goes and orders a cheese sandwich.

Now, when the feeling first comes on, and he shuts his eyes and imagines he sees limburg cheese, if the victim would go and buy a slice and go away out in the country, by the fertilizer factory, he could eat his cheese and no one but the workmen in the fertilizer factory could complain. That is what ought to be done when a man is addicted to cheese.

But this chief of police has stood up in the face of public opinion, eaten limburg cheese with brazen effrontery that would do credit to a lawyer, and has gone into a public conveyance, breathing pestilence and cheese. There is no law on our statute books that is adequate to punish a man who will thus trample upon the usages of society.

However, the conviction of Kennedy of eating limburg cheese will be the means of acquitting him of the other charge, that of conversing with a lewd woman. We doubt if there is a lewd woman, though she be terribly lewd, who would allow a man to come within several blocks of her who had been eating that deceased cheese.

If we were in Kennedy's place we would admit the cheese, and then bring ten thousand women to swear whether they would remain in the same room with a man who had been eating that cheese. There are men who do eat cheese, bad men, the wicked classes, who go into the presence of females, but that is one thing which causes so many suicides among the poor fallen girls. When we hear that another naughty but nice looking girl has been filling her skin full of paregoric and is standing off a doctor with a stomach pump, we instinctively feel as though some man with a smell of cheese about his garments had been paying attention to her, and she had become desperate.

If they discharge the chief on that cheese testimony it will be a lesson to all men hereafter.



TERRIBLE TIME ON THE CARS.

There is something about the average Chicago young man that gives him away, and gives away anybody that gets in with him. He is full of practical jokes, and is a bad egg on general principles.

Last week Mr. Eppenetus Hoyt, of Fond du Lac, went to Chicago on a visit. He is a pious gentleman, whose candor would carry conviction to the mind of the seeker after righteousness, and his presence at the prayer meeting, at the sociable or the horse-race, is an evidence that everything will be conducted on the square.

Mr. Hoyt knew a young man named Johnny Darling, who was attending Rush Medical College, and through him was permitted to visit the dissecting-room, and gaze upon the missionary work being done there. Mr. Hoyt was introduced to a number of the wicked young men who were carving the late lamented, and after he got accustomed to the climate he rather enjoyed the performance.

Whether young Mr. Darling told the boys that Mr. Hoyt was "fresh" or not, will, perhaps, never be known; but, as Mr. Hoyt passed around among the slabs where they were at work, each made a contribution from the "stiff" he was at work upon to Mr. Hoyt's coat pockets unbeknown to him. While one was calling his attention to a limb that he was dissecting, another would cut off an ear, or a finger, or a nose, or dig out an eye, and drop the same into Mr. Hoyt's overcoat pockets. Finally, he bid the boys good-bye, thanked them for their courtesies in showing him around, told them if they ever came to Fond du Lac his pew in church was at their disposal, and he skipped for the train and got on board.

The seats were all occupied, and a middle aged lady, with a slim face and spectacles, and evidently an old maid, allowed him to sit beside her. The car was warm, and it was not long before the "remains" began to be heard from. He was talking to the lady about the "sweet by-and-by," and the hope of a glorious immortality beyond the grave, and of the inducements held out by the good book to those who try to lead a different life here on earth, when he smelled something. The lady had been smelling it for some miles back, and she had got her eye on Mr. Hoyt, and had put her handkerchief to her nose. He took a long breath and said to the lady:

"The air seems sort o' fixed here in this car, does it not?" and he looked up at the transom.

"Yes," said the lady, as she turned pale, and asked him to let her out of the seat, "it is very much fixed, and I believe that you are the man that fixed it!" and she took her satchel and went to the rear of the car, where she glared at him as though he was a fat rendering establishment.

Mr. Hoyt devoted a few moments to silent prayer, and then his attention was called to a new married couple, in the seat ahead of him. They had been having their heads close together, when suddenly the bride said:

"Hennery, have you been drinking?"

He vowed by all that was great and glorious that he had not, when she told him there was something about his breath that reminded her of strong drink, or a packing-house.

He allowed that it was not him, but admitted that he had noticed there was something wrong, though he didn't know but it was some of her teeth that needed filling.

They were both mad at the insinuations of the other, and the bride leaned on the window and cried, while the groom looked the other way, and acted cross.

Mr. Hoyt was very much annoyed at the smell.

The smell remained, and people all around him got up and went to the forward end of the car, or to the rear, and there were a dozen empty seats when the conductor came in, and lots of people standing up. The conductor got one sniff, and said:

"Whoever has got that piece of limberger cheese in his pocket, will have to go in the emigrant car!"

They all looked at Hoyt, and the conductor went up to him and asked him if he didn't know any bettor than to be carrying around such cheese as that?

Hoyt said he hadn't got no cheese.

The conductor insisted that he had, and told him to turn his pockets wrong side out.

Hoyt jabbed his hands into his pockets, and felt something cold and clammy. He drew his hands out empty, turned pale, and said he didn't have any cheese.

The conductor insisted on his feeling again, and he brought to the surface a couple of human ears, a finger, and a thumb.

"What in the name of the Apostles have you got there?" says the conductor. "Do you belong to any canning establishment that sends canned missionary to the heathen cannibals?"

Hoyt told the conductor to come in the baggage car, and he would explain all; and as he passed by the passengers, with both hands full of the remains, the passengers were ready to lynch Hoyt. He told the conductor where he had been, and the boys had played it on him, and the fingers and things were thrown beside the track, where some one will find them and think a murder has been committed.

Afterwards Hoyt went into the car and tried to apologize to the old maid, but she said if he didn't go away from her she would scream. Hoyt would always rather go away than have a woman scream.

He is trying to think of some way to get even with the boys of Rush Medical College.



CHANGED SATCHELS.

There was one of those old fashioned mistakes occurred on the train from Monroe to Janesville a week or so ago. A traveling man and a girl who was going to Milton College sat in adjoining seats, and their satchels were exactly alike, and the traveling man took the wrong satchel and got off at Janesville, and the girl went on to Milton.

The drummer went down to Vankirk's grocery and put his satchel on the counter, and asked Van how his liver was getting along, while he picked a piece off a codfish and ate it, and then smelled of his fingers and said "Whew!" Van said his liver was "not very torpid, thank you; how are you fixed for tea?" The drummer said he wished he had as many dollars as he was fixed for tea, and began to open his sample case. Van cut off a piece of cheese and was eating it while he walked along towards the drummer.

When the case was opened the drummer fell over against a barrel of brooms, and grasping a keg of maple syrup for support, turned pale and said he'd be dashed. Van looked in the sample case, and said, "Fixed for tea! I should think you was, but it wasn't that kind of tea I want."

There was a long female night-shirt, clapboarded up in front with trimming and starch, and buttoned from Genesis to Revelations. Van took a butter tryer and lifted it out, and there was more than a peck measure full of stuff that never belonged in no grocery. Van said: "If you are traveling for a millinery house I will send a boy to direct you to a millinery store."

The drummer wiped the perspiration from his face with a coffee sack and told Van he would give him a million dollars if he never would let the house in Milwaukee know about it, and he chucked the things back in. "What is this?" said Van, as he held up a pair of giddy looking affairs that no drummer ever wore on his own person. "Don't ask me" says the drummer, "I am not a married man."

He took the satchel and went to Milton on the next train. The girl had opened the satchel which fell to her in the division to show her room-mate how to make a stitch in crochet, and when the brown sugar, coffee, tea, rice, bottles of syrup, maccaroni and a pack of cards came in sight, she fairly squealed. Along after dinner the drummer called and asked for an exchange, and they exchanged, and it was hard to tell which blushed the most.



THE NAUGHTY BUT NICE CHURCH CHOIR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, if a democratic torch-light procession had marched unbidden down her throat she couldn't have been any more astonished. She leaned over to pick up her handkerchief and spit the candy out, but there was enough pepper left around the selvage of her mouth to have pickled a peck of chow-chow.

It was her turn to sing, and as she rose and took the book, her eyes filled with tears, her voice trembled, her face was as red as a spanked lobster, and the way she sung that old hymn was a caution. With a sweet tremulo she sung, "A Charge to Keep I Have," and the congregation was almost melted to tears.

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

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



SENSE IN LITTLE BUGS.

There is a cockroach that makes his home on our desk that has got more sense than a delinquent subscriber. He—if it is a he one; we are not clear as to that—comes out and sits on the side, of the paste-dish, and draws in a long breath. If the paste is fresh he eats it, and wiggles his polonaise as much as to thank us, and goes away refreshed. If the paste is sour, and smells bad, he looks at us with a mournful expression, and goes away looking as though it was a mighty mean trick to play on a cockroach, and he runs about as though he was offended. When a package of wedding cake is placed on the desk he is the first one to find it out, and he sits and waits till we cut the string, when he goes into it and walks all over the cake till he strikes the bridal cake, when he gets onto it, stands on his head and seems to say, "Yum, yum," and is tickled as a girl with a fresh beau.

There is human nature in a cockroach. When a man comes in and sits around with no business, on our busy day, and asks questions, and stays and keeps us from working, the cockroach will come out and sit on the inkstand and look across at the visitor as much as to say:

"Why don't you go away about your business and leave the poor man alone, so he can get out some copy, and not keep us all standing around here doing nothing?"

But when the paper is out, and there is a look of cheerfulness about the place, and we are anxious to have friends call, the cockroach flies around over the papers and welcomes each caller as pleasantly as he can, and seems to enjoy it.

One day the paste smelled pretty bad, and we poured about a spoonful of whisky in it, and stirred it up. The cockroach came out to breakfast, and we never saw a person that seemed to enjoy the meal any more than the cockroach did. It seemed as though he couldn't get enough paste. Pretty soon he put one hand to his head and looked crosseyed. He tried to climb down off the paste-dish, and fell over himself and turned a flip-flap on the blotting paper. Then he looked at us in a sort of mysterious way, winked one eye as much as to say: "You think you are smart, don't you, old baldy?"

Then he put one hand to his forehead as if in meditation, and staggered off into a drawer, coming out presently with his arm around another cockroach, and he took him to the paste-pot, and he filled up, too, and then they locked arms and paraded up and down on the green cloth of the desk, as though singing, "We won't go home till morning," and they kicked over the steel pens, and acted a good deal like politicians after a caucus.

Finally, some remark was made by one of them that didn't suit, and they pitched in and had the worst fight that ever was, after which one rushed off as if after a policeman, and the other, staggered into his hole, and we saw no more of our cockroach till the next morning, when he came out with one hand on his head and the other on his stomach, and after smelling of the paste and looking sick, he walked off to a bottle of seltzer water and crawled up to the cork and looked around with an expression so human that we uncorked the bottle and let him in, and he drank as though he had been eating codfish. Since that day he looks at us a little suspicious, and when the paste smells a little peculiar he goes and gets another cockroach to eat some of it first, and he watches the effect.

Now, you wouldn't believe it, but that cockroach can tell, the minute he sees a man, whether the man has come in with a bill, or has come in to pay money. We don't know how he does it, but when a man has a bill the cockroach begins to look solemn and mournful, and puts his hands to his eyes as though weeping. If a man comes in to pay money, the cockroach looks glad, a smile plays around his mouth, and he acts kitteny. He acts the most human when ladies come into the office. If a book agent comes in, he makes no attempt to show his disgust.

One day an old person came in with a life of Garfield and laid it on the table, opened to the picture of the candidate, and left it. The cockroach walked through the violet ink and got his feet all covered, and then he walked all over that book, and left his mark. The woman saw the tracks, and thought we had signed our name, and she said she was sorry we had written our signature there, because she had another book for subscribers' names.

When a handsome lady comes in, the cockroach is in his element, and there is a good deal of proud flesh about him. He puts his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest and walks around.

One day we put our face up to a deaf young lady to speak to her, and the cockroach looked straight the other way, and seemed to be looking over an old copy of the Christian Statesman; but when he found we only yelled at the lady, he winked as much as to say:

"Well, how did I know?"

O, that cockroach is a thoroughbred!



SUMMER RESORTING.

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

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

"Been summer resorting, I hear?"

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

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

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

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

"Why, what's the trouble?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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 railway 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 whether 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 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 "squar."

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



INCIDENTS AT THE NEWHALL HOUSE FIRE.

There were a great many ludicrous scenes about the Newhall House during the fire of last Saturday morning. When people were notified that there was a fire in the house, but that the danger was not great, though it was thought best to give them all plenty of time to prepare for the worst, many jumped right out of bed and started down stairs.

When we arrived on the scene, our first inquiry was for the safety of the lady members of the Rice Surprise Party, the young women who had been cutting up on the stage all the week with so little apparel. We did not expect to find them in a greater state of barefootedness than they were when we saw them last, but in some instances they were.

We were kindly yet firmly informed by Mr. Rankin that the ladies had been rescued. It seemed that everybody wanted to save the girls. Mr. Rankin knew this, and knew that if the young and thoughtless gentlemen were allowed to rescue the girls it would cause remark. He said he was an old line democrat, and that his days of kittenhood were over, and that it was proper that he should superintend the removal of the girls.

Mr. McKittrick, the conductor, argued the matter with him. He said he had been running a train a good many years, and had seen all phases of humanity, and that he was inured to a life of hardship, and had seen many sad sights, in the sleeping cars, and he insisted that he be allowed to superintend the removal of the girls.

The discussion became warm, and finally they compromised by agreeing that McKittrick should rush into the rooms and drag them out of the fire and smoke and hand them to Mr. Rankin at the foot of the first pair of stairs, who would dispose of them in safety. They both agreed that the first outside vandal who laid a hand on them should die.

The first trouble they had was with Prof. Haskins.

He came out of his room with nothing on but his glasses, an ascension robe and one boot. He rushed through the hall, and while in front of the room of the girl who wore the black tights with the crochet work on the limbs he ventured a joke. He is the telegraph manager and he said, "There is a line down here," as a two inch stream struck him about the alleged pistol pocket. The girl, who was tying her wardrobe up in a napkin, heard him and said, "There is no lying down here, not much." Prof. Haskins was shocked that any female should thus mistake him for a democrat, and falling over a zinc trunk head first, he went back to his room to send his son Harry out to help.

Mr. McKittrick rushed into a room and grabbed a corset in his arms and handed it down stairs to Rankin There is no person who can fool Rankin. He didn't want to be rescued.

Just at this point a girl with a waterproof on came along the hall and Mr. Cole asked her if she didn't want to be rescued. She said she had been carried down stairs six times already by a big granger, and she would shoot the next man that attempted to rescue ner. She said there was no danger, and wanted to know why the big galoots did not go and help put the fire out.

On inquiry it was found that the girl had been carried down stairs six times and left on the sidewalk. She described the man who carried her out, and said he was excited, and no sooner would she get up stairs than he would grab her and carry her down again, until she was almost froze. He told her the last time that he had saved six girls from a fiery grave.



THE WAY WOMEN BOSS A PILLOW.

Among the recent inventions is a pillow holder. It is explained that the pillow holder is for the purpose of holding a pillow while the case is being put on. We trust this new invention will not come into general use, as there is no sight more beautiful to the eyes of man than to see a woman hold a pillow in her teeth while she gently manipulates the pillow case over it.

We do not say that a woman is beautiful with her mouth full of pillows. No one can ever accuse us of saying that, but there is something home-like and old-fashioned about it that can not be replaced by any invention.

We know that certain over-fastidious women have long clamored for some new method of putting on a pillow case, but these people have either lost their teeth, or the new ones do not grasp the situation. They have tried several new methods, such as blowing the pillow case up, and trying to get the pillow in before the wind got out, and they have tried to get the pillow in by rolling up the pillow case until the bottom is reached, and then placing 'the pillow on end and gently unrolling the pillow case, but all these schemes have their drawbacks.

The old style of chewing one end of the pillow, and holding it the way a retriever dog holds a duck, till the pillow case is on, and then spanking the pillow a couple of times on each side, is the best, and it gives the woman's jaws about the only rest they get during the day.

If any invention drives this old custom away from us, and we no more see the matrons of our land with their hair full of feathers and their mouths full of striped bed-ticking, we shall feel that one of the dearest of our institutions has been ruthlessly torn from us, and the fabric of our national supremacy has received a sad blow, and that our liberties are in danger.



THE DEADLY PAPER BAG

There is a woman on the West Side who has learned a lesson that will last her a lifetime. She has been for years wearing these paper bags, such as the green grocers use, for bustles. The paper is stiff, and sticks out splendid, and makes the dress look well. Last Sunday morning while she was dressing, her young son got in the room and blew the paper bag full of wind and tied a string around the mouth of it, and left it in a chair. The good lady took it and tied it on and dressed herself for church. She bribed her husband to go to church with her, though he is a sort of Bob Ingersoll christian.

As they went down the aisle the minister was reading a hymn about "Sounding the Loud Hosan-na," and the lady went into the pew first, and sat down while her husband was putting his hat on the floor. There was a report like distant thunder. You have heard how those confounded paper bags explode when boys blow them up, and crush them between their hands.

Well, it was worse than that, and everybody looked at the innocent husband, who was standing there a perfect picture of astonishment. He looked at his wife as much as to say: "Now, this is the last time you will catch me in church, if you are going to play any of your tricks on me. You think you can scare me into getting religion?"

The minister stopped reading the hymn and looked over his spectacles at the new comers as though it would not surprise him if that bad man should blow the church up. The poor lady blushed and looked around as much as to say, "I did not know it was loaded," and she looked the hymn book through for the hymn, and as the choir rose to sing she offered one side of the book to her husband, but he looked mad and pious, and stood at the other end of the pew and looked out of the stained glass window.

After the service they started home together, and as they turned the first corner he said to his wife, "Well, you played hell on your watch, didn't you?" She told him there was no such thing as hell in the Bible now, but that she would make that boy think there had been no revision of the Bible that left hell out, when she got home. We only get the story from the husband.

He said he didn't know what it was that made the noise until they got home, and after a little skirmishing around his wife held up a bursted paper bag, and asked the boy if he blew that bag up. He said he did, but he did not know there was anything wrong about it. The boy and his mother and a press board paid a visit to the back kitchen, and there was a sound of revelry. Boys will be boys.



THE VIRGINIA DUEL.

The proposed duel between Senator Mahone and Jubal Early did not come off, for reasons that have not been made public. It is well known that Mahone is the thinnest man in Virginia. We do not allude to his politics, or his ability, in speaking of his being thin, but to his frame. He does not make a shadow. He could hide behind a wire fence. Gen. Early, after challenging Mahone, went to practicing at a piece of white wire clothes line, hung to the limb of a tree, but he could not hit it, and he felt that all the advantage would be on Mr. Mahone's side, so he asked Mahone to do the only thing in his power that would make the thing even, and that was to eat a quantity of dried apples the day before the duel, in order to swell his stomach out so that a gentleman could stand some show of hitting him.

Gen. Early pledged himself, on the honor of a Virginia gentleman, that he would not shoot at Mahone's stomach, but would aim at it, and then make a line shot either above or below.

Mahone replied that, while he appreciated the advantage he had over his opponent, and was willing to do anything reasonable to make the thing even, he could not consistently eat dried apples, as they would certainly kill him. He was willing to take his chances on the bullets of his opponent, because statistics showed that dueling was the most healthy business a man could engage in; and he pointed to the number of duellists that were now living at a ripe old age, who had fought hundreds of duels and never received a scratch or scratched an opponent, but on the other hand he could produce proof to show that many people had been injured, if not killed, by an over-indulgence in dried apples.

Mr. Mahone said he thought it was late in the day for him to produce any proof as to his own bravery, but in the face of the fact that he would be pointed at as one who had not sand, he should have to decline to eat dried apples in order to make himself a target.

Gen. Early said he appreciated the delicacy of his honorable and high-toned opponent, and respected his feelings, and would not insist on the dried apple act, but that he would go into training to reduce himself in flesh to the size of Mahone, and hoped that the affair might be declared off until he could diet himself. He said he should at once begin a course of treatment to reduce his flesh, by boarding at a summer resort hotel that he had heard of, where the desired effect might be produced.

So the duel is postponed for the present. Both Mahone and Early are high-toned gentlemen, and they will do nothing rash.



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 menengitis; 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 whisky 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?



SPURIOUS TRIPE.

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

The tripe is expensive, owing to the royalty that has to be paid to the rubber company, and often the boarder succeeds in eating off some of the towel, so it has to be veneered over again; but take it the year round, and the tripe pays its way in a boarding-house.



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 smallpox. O, we suppose they have more fun in some of these country towns than you can shake a stick at.



MALE AND FEMALE MASHING.

There has been a great deal of talk in the papers about arresting "mashers," that is, young men who stand on the corners and pulverize women, and a great many good people got the idea that it was unsafe to travel the streets. This is not the case. A woman might travel all day and half the night and not be insulted. Of course, once in a great while, a woman will be insulted by a man, the same as a man will be by a woman.

No woman, unless she throws out one eye, kind of cunning, is in danger of having a male man throw out his other eye the same way. There has got to be two parties to a mashing match, and one must be a woman. Too many women act sort of queer just for fun, and the poor male man gets to acting improper before he realizes the enormity of the crime, and then it is everlastingly too late.

But a female masher, one who is thoroughly bad, like the male loafers that have been driven from the corners, is a terror. She will insult a respectable man and laugh at his blushes. One of them was arrested the other day for playing her act on a policeman who was disguised as a respectable granger from Stevens Point. These female mashers are a tornado.

Why, one of them met a respectable church member the other night, and asked him how his liver complaint was. He was a man who had been troubled with the liver complaint, and supposing she was some acquaintance, he stopped on the corner and talked with the pullet for about ten minutes, explaining to her the course of treatment he had used to cure him, and dozens of people passing by that knew him, and knew that she was clear off.

Finally she asked him if he wouldn't take her to a restaurant and buy her a spring chicken and a small bottle. He told her if she would come up to his house she should have a hen, and there were lots of bottles, both large and small, that she was welcome to. She told him to go to Hades, and he went in a drug store and asked a clerk who that lady was he had been talking with, and when the clerk, who knew her, told him she was a road agent, a street walker, a female masher, the old man had to sit down on a box of drugs and fan himself with his hat.

We mention this to show that ladies are not the only portion of the population that is liable to be accosted and insulted. The other night a respectable merchant was going to the opera with a friend from the country, when a couple of sirens met them and one said to the other, "Look at his nibs," and she locked arms with him and asked him if he was not her own darling. He said his name was not "Nibs," and he would have to look at his memorandum book before he could tell whether he was her darling or not, but from the smell of gin about her person he would blush to extemporize.

We do not give his exact language, but in the heat of debate he shook her and told her if she ever clawed on him again he would everlastingly go and tell her parents. And while he was talking with her the other one had seated herself beside his country friend on a salt barrel in front of a grocery and was feeling in his vest pocket to see if he had any cloves.

A female masher is much worse than a male masher as you can imagine. Who ever heard of a male masher feeling in an unprotected female's vest pocket for cloves? O, the men are simply unprotected, and at the mercy of wicked, designing women, and the police ought to protect them.



THE USES OF THE PAPER BAG.

A First Ward man was told by his wife to bring home a quart of oysters on New Year's night, to fry for supper. He drank a few prescriptions of egg nog, and then took a paper bag full of selects and started for home. He stopped at two or three saloons, and the bag began to melt, and when he left the last saloon the bottom fell out of the bag and the oysters were on the sidewalk.

We will leave the man there, gazing upon the wreck, and take the reader to the residence where he is expected.

A red-faced woman is putting the finishing touches to the supper table, and wondering why her husband does not come with the oysters. Presently a noise as of a lead pencil in the key-hole salutes her ear, and she goes to the door and opens it, and finds him taking the pencil out of the key-hole. Not seeing any oysters, she asks him if he has forgotten the oysters.

"Forgot noth(hic)ing," says he.

He walks up to the table and asks for a plate, which is given him by the unsuspicious wife.

"Damsaccident you ever(hic)see," said the truly good man, as he brought his hand out of his overcoat pocket, with four oysters, a little smoking tobacco, and a piece of cigar-stub.

"Slipperysoystersev (hic)er was," said he, as he run his hands down in the other pocket, bringing up five oysters, a piece of envelope, and a piece of wire that was used as a bail to the pail.

"Got all my pock(hic)ets full," said he, as he took a large oyster out of his vest pocket. Then he began to go down in his pants pocket, and finding a hole in it, he said:

"Six big oys(hic)ters gone down my trousers leg. S'posi'll find them in my boot," and he sat down to pull off his boot, when the lady took the plate of oysters and other stuff into the kitchen and threw them in the swill, and then she put him to bed, and all the time he was trying to tell her how the bag busted just as he was in front of All Saints Ca(hic)thedral.

*****

Three distinct charges of heresy will be made against Rev. Dr. Thomas, of Chicago, at the trial next month. The amount of heresy that is going on in this country, and particularly among ministers, is truly alarming. The names of his partners in guilt are not mentioned, probably out of respect for their families. A minister that goes around practicing heresy ought to be watched, and when caught at it he should be bounced. There is no excuse for heresy, though a minister will occasionally meet a mighty attractive her, but he should say: "Git thee foreninst me, Susan, and when I have a convenient season I will send the police after thee."

*****

There should be an amendment to the constitution of the United States making it lawful for an ex-President to walk on grass. We have no great admiration for Hayes, but when we read that at Cleveland he was ordered off the grass by a thirteen dollar a month soldier, and had to shin it-over a fence real spry to save the shoulder of his pants from assault by a cheap bayonet, it makes us feel ashamed, and we blush for America. The spectacle of a man who has occupied the White House, and been the chief attraction of county fairs, being compelled to put his stomach on a fence, and flop over, heels over appetite, like a boy playing tag, to keep from being jabbed in a vital part, makes us sick.



THE NEW COAL STOVE.

We never had a coal stove around the house until last Saturday. Have always used pine slabs and pieces of our neighbor's fence. They burn well, too, but the fence got all burned up, and the neighbor said he wouldn't build a new one, so we went down to Jones' and got a coal stove.

You see, we didn't know anything about coal stoves. We filled the stove about half full of pine fence, and, when the stuff got well to going, we filled the artesian well on the top with coal. It simmered and sputtered about five or ten minutes, and all went out, and we put on an overcoat and a pair of buckskin mittens and "went out too"—to supper. We remarked, in the course of the frugal meal, that Jones was a "froad" for recommending such a confounded refrigerator to a man to get warm by.

After supper we took a piece of ice and rubbed our hands warm, and went in where that stove was, resolved to make her draw and burn if it took all the pine fence in the First Ward. Our better-half threw a quilt over her, and shiveringly remarked that she never knew what real solid comfort was until she got a coal stove.

Stung by the sarcasm in her remark, we turned every dingus on the stove that was movable, or looked like it had anything to do with the draft, and pretty soon the stove began to heave up heat. It was not long before she stuttered like the new Silsby steamer. Talk about your heat! In ten minutes that room was as much worse than a Turkish bath as Hades is hotter than Liverman's ice-house. The perspiration fairly fried out of a tin water cooler in the next room. We opened the doors, and snow began to melt as far up Vine street as Hanscombe's house, and people all round the neighborhood put on linen clothes. And we couldn't stop the confounded thing.