Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1883 — Page 6

THIS TRAIN-BOY. Kid the rattling of the train. And the locomotive's noise, Like a patented ear-teaser. Comes the train-boy's voice; And while mankind squirms and wriggles, He doth hatefully rejoice. He will nudge you with his elbows. And bell tread upon your corn "With his big high-pressure box-toes Till of symmetry it’s shorn; ▲nd you wax profane, and sorrow That you ever had been born. With caramels hell pelt you. Then his cough-drops substitute; And he'fl inundate your troasers With his invalided fruit, Till he’s ready to uncover The freckled-patched cheroot. He’ll parade his water-lilies. That were gathered in the spring: Then a choice job lot of yellowCovered literature he’ll bring. And these ancient publications In your lap he’ll deftly fling. Magazines hell shower upon you. Daily journals he will pour, With his travel guide-books printed. Quite a dozen years or more; And the self-same :ot he's vended Heaven knows how oft before. You may sleep, cr swear, or threaten. You may every art employ To withstand his persecutions, And their bitternesss alloy; But not a continental Cares the wild, untamed train-boy. —Commercial Travelers' Magazine.

PROVIDENTIAL PIGS.

“Oh, missus, missus! Somefin’s done happened. ” Blank horror and dismay were depicted upon the face of my small African, as she stood upon my threshold with upraised hands and eyeballs that seemed starting from their sockets. Her pause was one of preparation, for with the innate consideration of her race she sought to break the news gently to me, but the burden of it was too great for her, and with the next breath she exclaimed: “Dem pigs done chawed up Miss Lyddy’s weddin’ gown!” “Glory,” I exclaimed (she had been Eiously christened Gloriana), “Glory, ow did it happen?” “Dunno!” said Glory. “Pears to me dem pigs has got Satan in ’em. Guess dey’ci ’scended from de ole lot what run down a steep place into the sea. I’ll go an’ fetch ye a piece’” She sped out and instantly returned with a tattered shred of India mull that had once been white, and still bore some resemblance to a gown. Poor Miss Lyddy! This was all that remained of her dream of wedding' splendors. It was too pitiful! I felt at once that the bonds of good neighborhood had been irretrievably broken, and that Maj. Hawthorne must be made aware of this last and worst depredation of his unseemly pigs. But who would break the news to Miss Lyddy? “Glory,” said I; “where is she?” “Gone over to de buryin’ place ob her ancestors, ” answered Glory. Poor, faithful soul; even in those last days of her maidenhood, with the vague terrors of matrimony and the still more appalling responsibility of unsaved heathen souls hanging over her, she did not forget the ancestors. Long lines of Ludkinses lay buried in little sunken hillocks in the family bury-ing-place which lay just in sight of her sitting-room window. She herself was the last her race, and until within three weeks it had seemed that the only fate which her was to live out her little space under the ancestral rooftree, and then take her place in the silent ranks of those who had gone before. But a change had come. It came in the person of a returned missionary from the Micronesian Islands, who had buried the first and second partners of his joys and sorrows somewhere under the palm trees of those tropical lands and had come back to the scenes of his youth to recruit his health, serve his cause, and look up partner No. 3. He met Miss Lyddy at a woman’s missionary meeting. He called the next afternoon and was invited to stay to tea. He accepted the invitation, and next morning Miss Lyddy came into my room—lor I, too, domiciled under the LudJfcins roof-tree,for a consideration —and, with much hesitation and many faint and delicate blushes, informed me that >she had promised to share the future lot of the Rev. Nehemiah Applebloom, ito take care of his six children, and to support him in his arduous labors among the heathen of the Micronesian Islands. I was struck dumb with amazement. “Miss Lyddy,” I said at length, “have you duly considered this project?” Her thin figure quivered, and her white face, that had yet a delicate remembrance of youth in it, grew tender with feeling. “Yes,” she said; “I think I have. I "have always had a presentiment that I should marry a minister or a missionary. ” Admirable and prophetic faith! “And Mr. Applebloom says he knew the moment he set eyes upon me that I was ordained to be his wife; so you see it is not the surprise to either of us that it is likely to be to our friends.” I knew that her mind was fully made up. I demurred no longer, but lent myself at once to discussion of the wedding', which I plainly saw was what Miss Lyddy desired of me. “You will be married in church, I suppose ?” “Oh, no,” said Miss Lyddy, with gentle decision. “I am the last of the Ludkinses. All the Ludkinses have been married at home. I will go out from under my own roof-tree. If I must seem to forsake the ancestors,” she paused to regulate a little choking in her throat, “I will at least not forsake their traditions. I shall leave a little money with the Parish Clerk, that he may see that the graves of my dead are kept in proper order, as I always have loved to keep them; but I shall at least go as a Ludkins should. It is my desire to be married in my grandmother’s wedding gown. ” Miss Lyddy’s voice trembled, and there was a humidity in her eyes, at which I did not wonder, for it was much like a funeral, after all. * “I thought, perhaps,” went on Miss Lyddy, “if I brought the venerated relic to you, you would tell me if anything were necessary to be done to fit it to me. I don’t care for the fashions, you know, and my grandmother, as I remember her, was about my height, but still, you know —something—some changes might be advisable. ”

“Certainly,” I said, “do bring it to me. I should so like to see it" “It is sprigged India (she called it Ingy) mull. My grandfather, Capt. Himon Ludkins, brought it home from over the seas. I’ll bring it. ” Like some pale and gentle ghost she rose then and went to the bureau drawer and unrolled from rolls of linen that smelt of lavender, the frail relic of Mrs. Capt. Simon Ludkins’ wedding state. It was fine embroidered mull, the undoubted product of Indian looms. “It’s lovely,” I said, “and so well kept that it will be just the thing for you. Will you try it on? , We can tell then just what it needs. ” Miss Liddy proceeded to disrobe herself and put on the spider-net gown. As she did so the changes in fashion’s mandates became only too evident. It had no waist to speak of, and just a little lace-trimmed puff for sleeves. Miss Liddy was evidently surprised. She had not thought of this. I knew well what the troubled took upon her face meant, and I pitied her maiden sensibilities. Could it be possible that her grandmother, Mrs. Capt. Simon Ludkins, had ever worn such a gown as this ? She said not a word that could indicate the depth of her mortification, but her face was a study for an artist, “There must be sleeves,” she murmured, after a few moments of silent and embarrassed contemplation. “Yes,” I replied, cheerfully as my constrained gravity would allow. “And you might have a fichu and a flounce on the bottom. ” She looked down. She had not before realized that the skirt of the venerated relic lacked a full quarter of a yard of touching the floor. “However could they!” she ejaculated in an undertone. But she quickly recovered herself, and looked up to me cheerfully over her spectacles. “How ingenious you are!” she said, with an air of sweet relief. “I knew you would help me out,” We went out together and bought the requisite mull that day, but when we came to put it beside the “venerated relic” of Mrs. Captain Ludkins it was evident that time had so enriched the color of the latter that the two were most unfortunately unlike. “We can lay it out on the grass,” I said; “these June days are just the thing for it, and as it will be evening, nobody wiß in the least notice.” Again Miss Lyddy smiled gratefully, and declared that my suggestion should be carried out.

The Rev. Nehemiah Applebloom—“A lovely name, don’t you think so?” said Miss Lyddy, and she blushed and smiled like a school-girl in her teens—had but a short furlough, and the marriage was to transpire next week, so the relic was put out to bleach forthwith. It had already been put upon the grass three days and nights, and had been religiously watered by Miss Lyddy at morn and noon and dewy eve, and the next day it was to be taken up early and put into the dressmaker’s hands for the necessary alterations, when the dreadful event occurred with which this narrative opens. “Glory,” I said, “do you keep watch for Miss Lyddy when she returns. Say nothing about what has happened unless she misses the gown from the grass. In that case tell her that I thought it was bleached enough and took it up to dry, and you don’t know where I have put* it. I am going out now, but if she asks where, tell her you don’t know. ” Glory was faithful, and had beside the natural craft of her race, and I knew that she could be trusted. As for me, 1 swiftly donned my bonnet and set out to find Maj. Hawthorne. It was a bright June evening, and my walk through the meadow and the grove that skirted Hawthornedean would have been a more delightful one if I had borne a mind more at ease. The Major was a gentleman by birth, but he lived out his fifty bachelor years in a gay and careless way that had seemed to set the gentler part of his creation at defiance in the lifetime of his parents. Hawthornedean had been a beautiful estate. It still retained many marks of wealthy and cultivated ownership, but it was sadly run down, as the home of a bachelor is apt to be. The grove, which had once been the pride of the place, was grown up with brush now, and the sere leaves of many summer’s growth rustled under my feet as I walked through it. At one point, coming suddenly around a thick clump of undergrowth, I heard a chorus of tiny snorts and the scampering of numberless hoofs, and I knew that I had invaded a haunt of the Major’s last agricultural freak, the very brood of Berkshire pigs that were the source of all my borrowed woes. Away they scampered, their snouts well raised in the air, and each with a curl in his tail that seemed too ornamental to be wholly the product of nature and to justify the village rumor that the Major’s own man put those tails in curlpapers every night. They had the air of spoiled children, every one, and were evidently the Major’s pets. But that didn’t matter; they had ruined Miss Lyddy’s wedding-gown, to say nothing of other aggravating exploits which do not belong to this story, and I was determined to have satisfaction out of their owner. I found the Major sitting on his piazza, with an after-dinner look upon his handsome, good-humored face. He rose to greet me with an air of oldschool politeness, dashed with a faint wonder that I, a woman, should have had the hardihood to approach a place so little frequented by women. “Good evening, Miss Grace. lam happy to see you. In what can I have the honor to serve you?” He had read my face, and knew that I had qome on a mission. “Maj. Hawthorne,” I said, paying no attention to his offer of a chair, “I have come on a very painful errand.” “Sit down, madam,” said the Major, politely. “I cannot possibly permit a lady to stand on my piazza. I ought, perhaps, to ask you to walk in, but it is rather stuffy inside this evening.” “No/ I said, “I will sit here, if you please.” To tell the truth, indoors, as seen through the windows, had not the most inviting look, and I was glad to compromise. “You have, no doubt, heard”—

plunging in medias res—“that Miss Lydia Ludkins is about to be married?” “Married! Miss Lydia! No! Hadn’t heard a word of it,” said the Major, in genuine amazement. “Who is the fortunate man, pray?” “The Rev. Nehemiah Applebloom, a missionary to the Micronesian Islands, who has come home to recruit his health and find a wife.” “I know him/ said the Major. “Saw him down at the station—a long, lean, lank individual —just fit for his vocation ; no temptation whatever to cannibals ! But what the deuce is he going to do with Miss Lydia? What will Balaam’s Corners do without her ?” “Balaam’s Corners must do the best it can, ” I said—l fear a little sharply — for my mind was still in a most aggressive state toward the Major. “They are to be married next week, and—” “What will become of the ‘ancestors ?’ ” interpolated the Major, in whom surprise seemed to have gotten the better of habitual politeness. “Oh, she has ’made arrangements with Mr. Crow about that.” “Just like her. Dear, faithful girL” The Major had all his life loved all the sex*—not one —and I was not to be beguiled by this show of feeling. “She had set her heart upon being married in her grandmother’s weddinggown.” “Old Mrs. Capt. Simon? I remember her well. A mighty fine woman. She never would have gone to the ends of the earth with a missionary. It's the craziest scheme I ever heard of. ” I began to fear I should never get to my errand. “It was put out on the grass to bleach, being a little yellow with age. It was a lovely embroidered India muslin that the old Captain brought home from India himself. ” “How well I remember him in my boyhood! A jolly old soul! A granddaughter of his go off to the Cannibal Islands to be eaten up by savages. I won’t have it!” “Her heart is set upon going,” I continued. “The wedding-gown was put out to bleach, and this very afternoon those little Berkshire pigs of yours—they are a nuisance to the whole neighborhood, Major—trampled and rooted it to pieces, so that it is utterly ruined.” “Little black rascals!” said the Major, with a chuckle behind his neckcloth.

“And I have come, without her knowledge, to tell you of it, because I was sure that, under the circumstances, a gentleman of your breeding would feel in honor bound to make some reparation to Miss Lydia.” The Major mused and looked at his boot for a moment in silence. “Miss Grace,” he said, at length, “I thank you for the service you rendered me in this matter. Will you have the goodness to say to Miss Ludkins, with my compliments, that I shall do myself the honor to wait upon her to-morrow at 10 o’clock to adjust this unfortunate matter? I beg, in the meantime, that she will give herself as little solicitude; for, though I cannot restore the ancient and venerated dry goods, I will do the best that is possible under the circumstances to make the. loss good.” . He bowed over my hand, and the audience was evidently concluded. Was I satisfied? No, indeed. What woman would not have felt wronged to be left, at the end of a mission of disinterested benevolence, in such a state of doubt and uncertainty as this? But I was obliged to go home, nevertheless, and wait as patiently as I could for the stroke of 10 next morning. Glory had been in hearing when the message had been delivered to Miss Lyddy, and she, too, was on the watch. At last she scudded in from the hedge, her ivories all a-glisten and her eyes wide open and full of a rather incomprehensible mirth.

“He’s a-comin’,” she said, “and such a sight!” At that minute the gate clicked, and up the walk strode, indeed, a most astonishing figure. The Major had gotten himself up into a continental suit, which he must have fished out of the unknown depths of the ancient .attics of Hawthorndean—black velvet coat, with lace ruffles at the wrist, knee-breeches, white satin waistcoat, slippers with shoe-buckles, powdered wig and cocked hat. He was six feet tall, portly and well formed, and he looked every inch a signer of the Declaration at the very least. He was followed by his colored man, who carried a large brown-paper parcel. “He’s come a-courtin’ missus,” said Gloty; “ye can see it in his face.” I had not the instinct of Glory, and doubted; but what his errand was I was dying to know. But he disappeared into Miss Lydia’s parlor, and I was left outside to temper my impatience as best I could. Presently Glory entered on tiptoe. “Missus, missus,” she whispered, “de do’s swung open jes’ de leas’ crack, an it’s jes’opposite the big mirror; an’ if ye come out here in the hall ye can see it all in the mirror as plain as day, an’ it’s a heap better’n a plav.” It was a temptation, but believe me> dear reader, I resisted it. Only as Glory ran back to her peeping I followed to pull her away, and send her out of doors—that was simply my duty —and there he was, full on his knees before her, and she with that rapt, seraphic look upon her face which no woman ever wears except on the most vitally interesting occasion. But, Glory disposed of, I went back to my sewing, and waited as best I could the conclusion of the momentous interview. The Major came out at length, as smiling as a May morning, leaving the brown paper parcel behind him. It was very still in Miss Lydia’s room for a quarter of an hour, and then she, too, emerged from her retreat Spread over her hands was a gown of cream-colored brocade, embelished with the lovliest roses in full bloom, with blue forget-me-not trailing jtiere and there among them. It had an ample waist, elbow-sleeves, and a train a yard and a half long. “My dear Grace," said she, “the Major has brought, me his mother’s wed-ding-gown to be married in. ” “It is beautiful,” I said; “but who is to be the bridegroom ?” She smiled as angels do, and looked

afar; a delicate flutter of pink hung out in her cheek to deprecate her recre ancy, as she whispered in a tone of gentle but consummate triumph: “The Major himself! Didn’t he look grand in his knee-breeches ?” “And Mr. Applebloom?” “Maj. Hawthorne will ' adjust that matter.” . “That matter, indeed?” She spoke as though it were already as remote from her as the pyramids. “I congratulate you, Miss Lydia,” I said, growing formal, for she had behaved shamefully. “Don’t blame" me,” she murmured. “Maj. Hawthorne declares he has loved me since I was a child, but never thought himself worthy of me, the gay deceiver; and Mr. Applelxxjm, you know, is only the acquaintance of a day." I wanted to ask her how she had disposed of her presentment, but I did not dare. Maj. Hawthorne subscribed SSO to the Micronesian mission, and sent Mr. Appleboom elsewhere to look for a wife, and the verdict of Balaam’s Corners was that he had done the handsome thing. “’Fore goodness!” said Glory, “es dare weren’t a clar relation between dem pigs an’ Providence, den I don’t know nothin’.” Miss Lydia took the same pious view of the matter, and made the Major the most dainty and dignified of wives.

Increase of Insanity.

One of the most recondite subjects which have puzzled the modern scientist aS well as medical man is the increase of insanity. It has been noted in Massachusetts that as asylums for the insane are multiplied more than enough inmates are found for them. From this it is there now argued by many that insanity grows in proportion to the increase in the means for its treatment. Long since, Malthus asserted that foundling hospitals and poor-houses only promote the evils which they are created to subdue. Indeed, since his day, in many countries society has acted to a considerable extent upon the theory of Malthus. In England and Ireland foundling hospitals are not as distinct features of the present civilization as they formerly were, while many distinguished French writers are of the opinion that the foundling hospitals of Paris are made to pander to some of the grossest vices of that city. It is a puzzle at the present day how it was that Rome was able to do without either poor-houses, foundling hospitals or insane asylums. As respects insanity, the fact that among the ancients it was looked upon as a species of inspiration, and thus that the insane were under special, divine,protection, may help to account for the absence of institutions for their proper care apart from their families and friends. However this may be, the fact remains that the growth of insanity in modern times is much greater proportionally than the growth of population. Another important fact is that in countries in which life is more energetic and active, and even in which education receives its highest comparative development, insanity will be found to be most abnormally developed. Thus the relative frequency of congenital and acquired insanity in various countries is shown in the following table, taken from Koch’s “Statistics of Insanity” in Wurtemburg, which gives the number of idiots to 100 lunatics: Country. No. Country. No. Prussialsß France 66 Bavarials4 Denmark 58 Saxonyl62 Sweden 22 Austria 53 Norway 65 Hungaryl4o Ergland and Wales.. 74 Canton of Berne. ...119 Scotland 68 America 79ilreland 69 From this table it will appear that the tendency to congenital insanity is greatest in those countries in which existence is most strained and in which at the same time education is carried to the very highest possible plane.— Chicago Daily News. •

“At Your Disposition.”

Spanish courtesy is extravagant in its expression. If you are a guest at a Spaniard’s house, and admire anything, the polite host at once says, with a bow, “It is at your disposition. ” But you are expected to decline it. The author of “Spain in Profile,” tells an amusing story of an American Admiral, which grew out of this custom: The Admiral had just ai-rived with the fleet at one of the Mediterranean porta, and a hospitable Spaniard, learning of his arrival, sent him an invitation to dinner, which was accepted with Jonathanian readiness. Dinner over, the party adjourned to the drawing-room, where Admiral Jonathan, after the fashion of his country, began to admire first one thing and then another, especially one object of great beauty and costliness, thinking all the while merely to compliment his host on his taste. “It is at the disposition of your Grace,” replied the courteous host. Stares, polite excuses, refusals, apologies, proved vain; the object was packed up and sent to the Admiral’s ship, who, happy in the possession of a rare work of art, took no thought for the morrow —when the Spaniard sent for-it! This empty phrase, “At the disposition of your Grace,” is all that survives of a once princely custom. One of the Spanish Kings gave Charles I. the jewel of his picture-gallery because he had carelessly admired it.

A Terrible Sameness.

A young student of the law was devotedly, although perhaps not as intelligently, poring over Blackstone, and at the close of each day’s labor he would carefully insert a bookmark at the page he had last finished. His fellow students as regularly each day removed the marker, placing it at about the point where he had begun. It was only after the young student had completed his fourteenth reading of the same pages that some one ventured to inquire how he liked Blackstone. “I can’t exactly say that I liked it,” replied he; “there is such a terrible sameness to it.” Lokdon contains 100,000 Jews and the finest Hebrew library in the world.

Royal Children.

Ordinary children who envy the lot of Princes and Princesses may console themselves with the reflection that these favored young mortals have a terrible number of things to learn. The curriculum of a Prince’s studies would dismay any public-school boy. Very little time is left him for play, and still less for that solitary loafing about and meditation in which most boys delight. If he disappeared for a couple of hours to go on some frolicsome expedition by himself, he would arouse an alarm throughout the palace where he resided, and possibly cause his governor or tutor to be dismissed. The late Prince Imperial of France, when he was 10 years old, once walked out of the Tuileries for a ramble in the streets, having been seized suddenly with an irresistible temptation to go and join some boys whom he had seen snow-balling. He returned after an absence of four hours, but in the meantime a hundred detectives had been scouring Paris for him, and he found his parents almost frantic with terror. The little King of Rome, Napoleon I.’s son, once wanted to play truant in the same way, but was checked in time. He then declared, with much weeping, that he wanted to go and make mud-pies with some dirty boys who were playing on one of the quays of the Seine. Napoleon IH.’s heir was also sorely teased by a couple of most accomplished but too earnest tutors, Gen. Frossard and M. Monnier. One day he had been sent out to see a regatta on the Seine. “Well, what have you been doing?” said his father when he returned heine. “Oh, we have been talking of triremes, said the boy, wearily, “and I have heard the story of Duilius over again.” The Prince Imperial, however, was quite intelligent (enough to understand that in these days the heir apparent to a throne must not ( be a dunce, and he was perhaps one of the most amiable pupils any court tutor ever had. It is a custom in the Prussian royal family that every Prince shall ba apprenticed to a trade, in order that he might be able to earn his living in case ■of a revolution. The present Crown Prince was taught watchmaking, but whether he could obtain the wages of a skilled journeyman, if his father’s crown failed him, is another question. During the French Revolution the Duke of Orleans, who afterward became “King of the French,” by the .title of Louis Philippe, had for a time to earn his living as a schoolmaster in If only a little occasional joelity were allowed to relieve the tedium of these lessons, the lot of a young Prince might pstill be regarded as a pleasant one; but, by all accounts, it seems that some of the German Princes are brought up .with a military strictness that would have commended itself to the approval of a Spartan. The King of Bavaria when Crown Prince was made to live .on beef and njutton, and his ration of (the latter food was never allowed to ‘exceed one mutton chop. It is related that on the day when he became King, his first act of royal prerogative was to say to his equerry: “I mean to have two chops this morning!”— Lutheran.

First American Free Schools.

A law was passed in Massachusetts in 1649 requiring every township to maintain a free school and every town of 100 families to maintain a grammar pchool to “fit youths for the university;” and it is recorded in 1665 that a free school was then supported by each town in New England. The Connecticut, Plymouth and New Haven colonies soon (followed this good example of Massachusetts, either in whole or in part. The first public school in Pennsylvania was established in Philadelphia by the Quakers, in 1689, free to those who could not pay. In 1694 Maryland enacted that every county should have a (public school and every parish a free library of at least fifty volumes. A free grammar school was established in New York by an act passed in 1702; but a system of free common schools was not inaugurated in this State until after 1795, in which year, on the recommendation of Gov. Clinton, the Legislature appropriated $50,000 to encourage the establishment of common schools—not wholly free. It was years after this before the system of schools free to all (except colored children) went into operation in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. The Southern States waited until after the war before adopting the free-school system, even for white children. Their common schools were free only for the children of confessed paupers. Who was ‘‘the first advocate” of free schools it is now impossible to determine positively. Several of them came over in the Mayflower, as there were a few free schools in Massachusetts before the above enactment of 1649, making it obligatory on every town to have them, the chief argument then being that “every child must know how to read the Bible.”— Chicago Inter Ocean.

The Son of a Pill.

It is interesting to look back of the finery which wealth has put on the backs of women at the watering places to see how the money has been obtained. “Do you see that lady in a white Ottoman silk?” a correspondent was asked. “The one with the shapely figure?” he responded. “Yes, that’s the one; but her shape always seems to me like a certain bottle of bitters. Why? Because her fathers fortune came from the manufacture of a constituent of cock-tails. Over yonder, in dainty mull, is the wife of a facepowder; going down the hallway are the two daughters of a cough syrup, and the swell who drove past a few minutes ago in a dog-cart tandem was a son of apilh” The cheapest and simplest gymnasium in the world-=-one that will exercise every muscle and bone in the body—is a flat piece of steel, notched on one side, fitted tightly into a wooden frame, and, after being greased on both sides with a bacon rind, rubbed into a stick of wood laid lengthwise in a sawbuck.

HUMOR.

A mental reck—l guesstso. A lanb-lady—Mother Earth. A spreab of canvas on a vessel is for sail or to rent When a miner strikes a lode it lightens his labor. Cboquet is a cute game, but billiards is the cue-test. A photographer may be able to make a sac-simile, but scarlet fever will make a sick family.— Carl Pretests Weekly. The question is asked us if there is anything that will bring youth to a woman? Yes, indeed. An income of $20,000 will bring any number of them. “I guess that girl must be the flour of the family,” remarked the young, man who had been waltzing with her, as he essayed to brush oft* the white spot on his coat sleeve. Mulcahy says the statement that John Roach’s ship is the first iron vessel launched in America is a mistake, as Mrs. Mulcahy frequently launches iron vessels at him. “No,” said a New York belle, who had just returned from a tour of Eur rope and Egypt. “No, I didn’t go to the Red sea. Red, you know, doesn’t agree with my complexion.” At the wrong door: At the baths an impatient young man walked up to the door of one of the compartments and, knocking on the same, testily inquired'— “When in blazes are you going to get those trousers on?” There was a faint giggle and a silvery voice replied: “When I get married, I suppose.” He had mistaken the door; that’s all. She wept by the chamber window, Till her eyes were swollen and red, (It was half-past 2 in the marning) “ He comeili not,” she said. “ He told me he’d come home early. But he’s gone to the club, I suppose— The brute 1 I wish I were only a dub— I’d break myself over his nose!" —Carl Pretzel's Weekly. The widow of a distinguished professor was visited by a rather shabbygenteel sort of a gentleman, who expressed great admiration for her deceased husband, and who finally said: “I revere the memory of your husband, and would like very much to have some relic to keep and cherish. “The only relic I can offer you,” replied the disconsolate widow, sighing heavily, “is myself. If you will love and cherish me for his sake you may.” But the relic-hunter had silently stolen away before she could finish the sentence.— Texas Siftings. ON MARGIN. Only went is on a margin. Big profits looming In view. With a boom and a swelt of the market A cool million! Then he'd be through. Only the market still rising. And profits grow greater and swell, And the loot is but grasping who holds on And stoutly refuses to sell. Only a pocket depleted— Dejected, “ buster! ” and sore, And the bird that is plucked well now wishes He’d got out the sad deal before. —Philadelphia Press. Young Mr. Tremble, who is quite bright, was at a party one night and he was quite well looked at by the girls before he was introduced. After the introduction he soon caught on, and was making himself very popular. “Oh. la, Mr. Tremble,” laughed Miss Mollie at one of his witty remarks, “you remind me so much of a friend of mine.” “Indeed, Miss,” said Tremble, “in what way?” “Oh, he looked just like he hadn’t a bit of sense, but when one knew him, he was just too awfully cute for any use.”— Merchant-Traveler.

The Jumbo of Crickets.

Throughout the whole Territory of Utah the cricket is one of the common objects of the country, but there’ are crickets and crickets, and it is just as well when in search of the best article to “see that you get it.” For a consideration, therefore, I will put the speculator on the track of some of the grossest locusts that ever devoured green stuff—locusts, moreover, that squeak when pursued. Poets (American poets, especially) are very partial to what they are pleased to call the cricket’s merry chirp. But the poet’s cricket is the insect of the domestic hearth, a pale-colored ghost of a thing, all voice, and with an irregular midnight appetite for the kitehen cloths that are hung out to dry before the stove. The Piutes’ cricket is very much otherwise. It is the Jumbo of crickets, and just as black. It lives on the slopes of the Utah hills, among the sage-brush, afid when alarmed tries invariably to jump down-hill. But, being all stomach, and therefore top-heavyj so to speak, the ill-balanced insect invariably rolls head over heels, and every time it turns a somersault it squeaks dismally. To walk down the hillside, driving a whole herd of these corpulent crickets before me, used to amuse me immoderately, for the spectacle of so many fat things simultaneously trying to jump downhill, simultaneously rolling head over heels, and simultaneously squeaking, was mirthful enough to drive the dullest care away.— Phil Robinson, in Harper's Magazine.

Husk Beds.

A correspondent of Household says the way to make a husk bed is to put the husks into plenty of water and spread them on the grass to dry, first spreading sheets on the grass, to keep away the insects, etc., if possible. When the husks are dry, draw them through a flax hatchel, or with a fork split them several times to make them softer. Then fill into a bed-tick. Don’t put in enough to be hard, but make a good, comfortable bed. Have a slit in the center of the bed-tick, and every day stir the husks up. A button and button-hole in the bed-tick will make all secure and if you wash or scald the husks every few years they will keep sweet and you will have a cheap and comfortable bed.

A Stubborn Fact.

A man was blowing about the solidi ty of his flesh and the compact manner in which he was built, his weight and muscle, and, during a breathing spell, exclaimed, while holding up his leg: “Just look at that calf!” A gentleman, who was in the audience, quietly remarked: “We do not have to look down there to see the calf. ” Carl Pretzel's Weekly* Fob a “cold in the head,” the snuffing of powdered borax is said to be * sure relief.