Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1883 — Page 6

THE ORCHARD A'll) THE HEATH. BY GEORGE MEREDITH. X chanced upon an ear.y walk to spy A troop of cuildran through an orchard (fate; The bouffhfl hunt,' low. ihe g a-s was high; They bad but to lift hand* or wait For fruits to HU them; j ruits were all their sky. They ahoufed. running on from tree to tree. And playeei the game the wind plays, on and round. "Twas risible,invisible glee Pursuing; and a fountain's sound Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me. I could have watched them till the daylight fled. Their pretty bower made such a light of d ty. A small one tumbling saog, "Oh. head!" The rest to comfort her Mtnaghtw*y Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red. The tiny creatures flashing through green grass. And laughing with her feet and eyes among Fresh apples, while a little lass Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung; That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass. My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes, Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers; Beyond the wheel-ruts of th» wains, Across a heath I walked for hours, And met its rival tenants, rays and rains. Still in my view milo distant firs appeared. ‘ When, under a patched channel-bank enriched Witti foxglove whose late-bells drooped seared, Behold, a family had 1 itched Their camp, and laboring the low tent upreared. Here, too, were many children, quick to scan A new thing coming; swarthy checks, white teeth; Jn many-colored rags they ran, Like iron runlets of the heath. Dispersed lay broth-pots, sticks, and drinkingcan. Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea Tipped sideways by the wave (the irclothing slid From either ridge unequally), Lean, swiit andyoluble, bestrid A starting-point, unfrocked to the benfknee. They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke , Xn act to iollow, but as one they snuffed Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke Of provender, its pale flame putted, And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke. Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam The mother-pet pursuing, all, stretched flat. Paused for its bubbbng-up supreme; A dog upright in cud sat. And ox t his nose went with the flying steam. I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now The moon-faced sunset, broadend with red light, Threw high aloft a golden bough, And seemed the dearest of the night Far down with mellow orccarus to endow. — AtheMßuin.

HER LAST CONFESSION.

% BY G. P. LATHItOP. A mill without water, wind or steam to drive it—what a curious thing! Yet, there it stood, and had stood for many a year, and no ono could tell the reason, though you could not fail to see that there must be some story belonging to the place. Strangers coming to Nantucket sometimes asked about it, but a 1 they could find out was, that one day long ago the dam of the mill-pond had given way, the wetter had all .gene out with a rush, and the stream was scattered in new channels or was lost in the sandy soil. The loss came upon old Humphrey Gurton, the miller, at a time w hen he could not afford to rebuild. He was thenceforth a ruined man. People said that his loss made him crazy, for he used to declare that Ihp water could never have escaped if some one had not opened the waste-pipe in the dam; and lie vowed vengeance against the person who had ruined him out of mere mischief. Finally the idea worked upon him so that he used to go about the streets with a pistol in his hand. “Hooking for my unknown enemy,” lie said. The town-peojile were easy-going, and since Gurton had alwavs been one of the kindest men alive, and never had an enemy in the place, they didn’t dream of harm coming from his threats. But one day, about four years after the accident, he met John Bartow, and in a sudden fury shot him dead. “He was the man that'did it!” cried old Humphrey, with insane satisfaction. “Bartow is the enemy I have been looking for. I told you X would kill him when I found him, and now I’ve done lit.'” When this tragedy occurred, everybody saw that Gurton had become a maniac past cure,- for Barjtow was one of his best friends, and, in fact, Bartow’s - daughter Nelly, llien 16, was engaged to marry old Humphrey's son Will, one • of the finest fellows on the island. The poor miller was carried away to lithe mainland, to an asylum for the insane, and there he died. A great change had come over Nelly since the miller’s ruin. She was only a girl of 15 at the time; but she and Will Gurton had even then promised to marry each other when they should -grow up.

The engagement was not broken, though Will came to her when he found his father was ruined, and told hei that :she would have to marry a poor man if eke took him now. "Still,” he said, “I am only 18, and if you will be true to me when we are older, Nelly, I may get to be well oft *>y the time we are married. Only I must go as a sailor, now, for father has no business for me, as he expected to have. I must trust to the sea, and work my own way up.” “Oh, Will,” said the girl, weeping. "You know I shall love you always, and it doesn’t make any difference about the mill. And I shall keep my promise, if you still want me. But I am not .good enough. No, Will, >I am not good •enough.” At this the young boy grew a little angry. “Never say that again, Nelly,” he commanded her. “I don’t know what you mean when you cdll yourself not good enough!” But they soon came to an understanding again, and Will Kissed her, and Nelly tried to look bright once more, and the promise was renewed. The two children had already confided this promise to their parents, and, though it was looked upon as premature, it had received their approval. But the change in Nelly, of which I have spoken, was this, that, while be l fore she had been one of the merriest; romping girls in the town, always fuH •of fun and tricksiness, she now became 'Very serious and almost melancholy. “Why, cheer up, Nell,” her father would often say to her. “What is my little girl thinking about ? Has any one •done aught to hurt you ?” “No, father,” Nelly would answer, <geiy briefly. And then she would go

t away, as if to avoid being questioned. When she grew older, Mr. Bartowthought perhaps she was grieving about Will, seeing how the childish attachment was ripening into Womanly love. “I know it is hard,” he once said to her, “to think how different Will’s lot would have been if he had had the mill; but don't fix your mind on that, my child. You Have got a brave fellow, and he is. sure to do well for you.” “But I never wanted him to go to sea, you know, father. And now it is coming like a fate. He’s going away like all the other boys.” “Pshaw!” said Mr. Bartow,*who had served many years on the whale ships and rather despised land employment. “In my time the girls would not have a lover at all who had not toughened his hands on the ropes for one voyage, at least. Don’t pout over that.” Nelly agreed to try being braver; but her pensiveness did not dimmish, and her father began to suspect that there was some cause for it winch she had not revealed.

And then came the terrible day when he wa3 murdered by the poor, crazed miller. After that, no one wasted any wonder over that melancholy expression which was gradually becoming indelible upon Nelly’s face. * Her future husband’s father had fallen a prey to disaster and died in madnes*, while her own father had been cut off in his hale vigor by. that very hand which should have welcomed her as a daughter. Were not these events enough to have wrought a revolution in her character ? She was terribly overwhelmed when her fat! er was brought home, after the shooting. Those who saw her related that her grief was almost too awful even to speak of afterward. She seeded to consider herself the cause of the calamity; “On, I wish I had never been born!” she cried. “But for me these griefs would never have come to us all. My poor, poor father —he wondered so what made me sad, and I never told him; and I felt something dreadful coming—but how could I tell it was to be this?” “Hush!” said one of her friends. “It is wrong to talk so, as if you could make or prevent what Providence has appointed.” “But I am doomed, I am doomed,” moaned Nelly. “And all who are nearest to me are being visited with my doom. ” “How do you mean?” asked her

friend, bewildered. -Then Nelly became quiet at once. She set herself to care for her mother, and never again gave any Outward sign of her own dreadful suffering; and she showed such dread when any reference was made.to that one outbreak of wild grief, that her friends learned not to speak of it again. She was so devoted to her stricken mother, that every one* pointed her out as a pattern to their children, and poor Mrs. Bartow often said to her that without her she should not have been able to live a week. “How different you are, Nelly,” she would say, “from the thoughtless, funloving little tiling you used to be. I never thought you would be sucb a comfort and stay to me. ” “Oh, mother,” begged Nelly, “don’t praise me for that. I don’t deserve to have you think so much of me. I ought to have been better than I am. I can’t bear to liave you call me good!” When she sp@ke thus it only made her seem all the better for her modesty. But in spite of her tender care, the widow gradually fell into a decline, arid at length she, too, passed away.

This was while Will was absent on his first cruise. At first, when Mr. Bartow was killed, the gossips had decided that it would be unnatural for Nelly Bartow and Will Gurton to become man and wife. But the two young people in question decided otherwise. Their love was the one bright thing left to them in the midst of the gloom that was gathering over their lives, and they clung to it faithfully. So when Will came home and found Nelly left alone in the world, they were married at once. They lived in the old mill by the grassy hollow, that now occupied the place of the pond. Around it some shabby poplars grew, from behind which the queer, antique houses, standing at various angles, peered out in a dazed kind of a way, as if they bad never got over the joke, or the surprise, of having the little stretch of water suddenly vanish from before them. Nelly, also, had never gotten over the shock of that event and all the changes which followed it. But she tried to be cheerful, for Will’s sake, and he was proud of his wife. Yet Nelly’s misfortunes were not over; for, on his second cruise, Will’s ship was wrecked and he was lost with a number of the crew. She never would marry again, and so she was left to live, without children, utterly alone in the old mill. She shunned all companionship, for she had a secret in her heart which was a very exacting companion and drove out everything else. By-and-by, as she grew old, she w’as so peculiar that few persons attempted to have anything to do with her. She became very poor, but when charitable towns-people went and offered her help she repulsed them, saying, almost fiercely: “ What have Ito do with you,? You are not witches, and don’t you know I am an old witch and have brought sorrow and suffering on all who have had to do with me? Leave me alone.” So the children got to be afraid of her. But, as is often the case, they tried to show that they weren’t afraid, by majcing fun of her and teasing her. They would go to her house and knock on the windows and door, and hide when she came out; or else they would fasten the door on the outside, and throw things in at the open window, to plague her. 1 Peggy Winslow, who was a leader Its these adventures, one day conceived the idea of placing some flowers, which she had filled with red pepper, on the top of the door, so that they would fall down on old Dame Gurton (as Nelly was now called) when she came out, and half choke her with sneezing. Peggy chose flowers so that if Dame Gurton didn’t feel the pepper at once,

would be most likely to take up the flowers and smell them. The trick succeeded. Poor old Nelly was brought to the door by a gentle tap which deceived her into thinking it was some one come with sewing for her to do. Bdt when the flowers fell down, and she found no one at the threshold, she stooped and picked up the nosegay with a strange sensation of surprised happiness. She fancied some one had had a kind thought for her, and expressed it in this way. But when she stooped with difficulty and picked up the flewers, she discovered the imposition too late. The pepper went into her nose and eyes and convulsed her. What was worse than that was the bitter disappointment of finding what seemed such a pretty gift only a malicious jest. She rushed out into the old patch of shrubbery she called her garden, to find the offender. Peggy had hidden behind a bush, expecting the result with great enjoyment. But, when Dame Gurton appeared, she was overcome with fright. The old woman was gasping for breath, her eyes were streaming; she shook her fist in the air with rage, and sobs of mortification interrupted her outcries.

Peggy fled home as fast as she could go, feeling that she had been very wicke'd. She could hardly bear to face her mother. Yet how could her mother ever know what she had done ? This reflection, however, didn’t console her; and, before she had said her prayers that night, she had confessed the whole story. # Mrs. Winslow took Peggy'to the old mill the very next morning to tell Dame Gurton how sorry they both were that such a cruel and wanton thing should have been done. They found old Nelly very gentle. She looked at Peggy a long while, then sighed and said: “You are like me when I was young. But you will change, you will change. God grant you may not have such a lesson as I did.” , “What was that?” asked Mrs. Winslow. But Dame Gurton would say nothing more. After that, though* she allowed Mrs. Winslow and Peggy to visit and befriend her. It was only a few weeks later that old Nelly fell ill, and her case soon became so serious that it was plain she could not recover. When she was perfectly sure that she must die, she asked Mrs. Winslow, who was with her, to send for Peggy. “I have something to tell you both,” she said. “But no one else shall hear, and if the doctor comes, he must wait till I have done. ” Then, after Peggy had come and. taken her place beside the bed, the dying woman began. “I am glad I am going to tell it,” she said, “for my whole life has been blackened by keeping it to myself. It would have been aav-ful to die with that secret in my breast. “Oh, you may say it was a little thing to feel so about; but that was what I said to myself all the time, and I was wrong! I only did it for fun, just for fun, as you put pepper in those flowers, my little Peggy. But see what it did to me afterward ! That wasn’t for fun, you may be sure. ” She paused, and her abstracted gaze and suffering face seemed to show that she was looking back over her life. Then she went oar

“It was the waste-pipe in the milldam, and I kept thinking how funny it would be, and how Mr. Gurton would stare, if I could let all the water out before he knew it. I thought it was all right, because Will made love to me then, and I didn’t dream of doing any harm to them that were like to be so near aftd dear ,to me. So I went all alone and secret, and I could work at it without being seen, because there were bushes growing close around it. At last I got the plug out, and then I crept away and hurried home. Mr. Gurton —he was the miller, you know —was away. But the water got down so it wouldn’t run over the top, and the race was shut off, so it pushed against the dam faster than the plug-hole would let it run out, and the whole thing went and the water was lost. “I didn’t think even then but what it could be fixed, though I was awful scared. But you know, Mrs. Winslow, what happened to Will’s father, and then to mine. ” she explained to Peggy what has bee, told above.) “And wher I found a:’ that mischief had been done and how people felt, I was afraid. And I durstn’t tell Will, for fear he’d hate me. And I never told anybody. “I thought it couldn’t hMp things any to tell, now the harm had been done, and so I held my tongue. But when my husband died, and I thought how he was gone from me perhaps forever, and didn’t know it was I that drove his pooy father crazy, and so led to my own father's death—oh, then, I tell you, I saw how wrong I had been to keep secret about it! “Just think! I had ruined miller Gurton, and lost father, mother and husband, all through letting out the pond; and yet I had been taking their love and pretending to be fit for it, all the time. “So I had done two wrong things instead of one. And all these years I’ve sat and looked at the place where the pond was, and the old happiness that used to be in my heart withered away like the water-plants that used to grow by the pond. “If I hadn’t done that one thing for fun, Will needn’t have been a sailor, and I might have had him with me till now, and if I had only told him everything ! But now some one knows at last. I’ve told all, and I shall die easier.” A greater peace came into her face than had ever been there since her girlhood ; and with that look she breathed her last the same night. Little Peggy Winslow needed no one to enforce the lesson she had learned from Dame Gurton’a confession. “How glad I am, mamma,” said she, “that I fjold you right away the wrong thing I had done!”— Youth’s Companion. In New York City 100,000 children earn their own living.

THE TIP NUISANCE.

4n Imported Evil which la Spreading In New York [From the New York World.] The tip tax is a formidable figure in daily expenses and annoyances in this city. That must be paid, though rent and doctor’s bills languish. If it isn’t paid promptly, and with'an appearance of cheerful acquiescence, you can’t move on. It is an English importation which' has grown to overpowering .proportions. . When you tip a waiter you don’t pay him for what he has done for you. The man who employs him does that. You give him a coin as th& tribute exacted by inferiority of its betters. It is the tariff levied upon superior position. In some ill-defined way it is supposed to confer honor on the giver, and in an unmistakable way it degrades the receiver. That feature of the transaction, however, disturbs not the waiter. He wants his tip and will have it, regardless of ultimate results. And he knows exactly how to get it, too. He contrives to make the guest understand that he expects it; that it is a part of the programme, which, if omitted, would leave him, the guest, no selfrespect at all. Mr. Yellowplush does all this without swerving a hair’s breadth from the strictest outward decorum. He says nothing on the subject, of course. He simply makes his face, hin manher, his attitudes and his voice convey his wishes. There is no mistaking the significance of the language he employs. The strongest man becomes helpless under this treatment, and yields in spite of a thousand resolutions to discourage this whole exasperating business.

The circle addicted to levying tips is constantly increasing. Porters, tablewaiters, messengers, baggage-wheelers, janitors and all orders of servitors who are without pride belong to the tip-re-ceiving fraternity; but the table-waiter leads off. He is the most skilled tipgetter. He can reduce the most obdurate to subjection. Only those who never expect to return to the diningroom over which he presides escape him. Even the female has picked up a little of the art of tip-compelling. She serves in bakeries, dairies and less pretentious places than does the grandiose creature who poses in swell dining-rooms and is more reasonable in her demands, but she is not to be put off. If the nimble quarter is not forthcoming with reasonable prompitude she grows cold as to expression and insufferable as to manner. You feel as uncomfortable as a Russian monarch expecting a Nihilist’s dagger. After the placatory coin reaches her she smiles and grows as genial as a Florida garden. If it was only when we eat that this tax is levied one might refrain from growling,however inconvenient the custom; but the open palm of the tipreceiver is stretched toward you on all occasions. You go to the depot to get some baggage checked. The strongarmed man in a blue blouse-, whose duty it is to hunt it up for you, departs with such alacrity and returns with such cheerfulness, bringing the baggage, that you are lost in admiration of the beauty of a large and well-systematized force of officials. Here, you think, are employes who actually serve the public as though it were a pleasure. Suddenly ! you glance at the accommodating baggageman’s face, and, although it is composed and polite, you understand the unspoken mandate. If it takes your last piece of silver, the tip must be paid. You feel that, in spite of all law, if you don’t yield the man will then and there take a hammer and beat your trunk and its contents all to pieces. You are overawed in the same way by the porter who carries your three-pound sachel up-stairs. He may set it down with all deference to your wishes and comfort, and appear not to be hurrying you up about the change, but if you let the door close upon him without having crossed his palm with silver you are lost, as far as comfort is concerned. The parting glance of his eye tells you that. Everywhere in the metropolis the tip must be paid. It is even more obligatory than the grocer’s bill. Many conscienceless people do succeed in evading the grocer and outgenerating the butcher, but no one escapes the tipleviefs of New York. One of the waiter’s ways of making it impossible to avoid paying him his expected tribute money is to contrive to have a few small silver pieces under the bills on the platform which he carries back to change. The cashier lends a hand in this arrangement. The silver pieces are placed in a row on t*ie waiter’s side, inclining toward him like a leaning tower. The man doesn’t live who dares to pick these poor little fractions up piece by piece and pocket them in the presence of the expectant waiter. That functionary bows a servile acknowledgment as he gathers them to himself, which, literally translated, means, “It’s well you took the hint, otherwise you would have regretted it.”

The Streets of Cairo.

The most populous streets of Cairo are more populous and more crowded than any street in Paris, but their life is of a different kind. There is no regularity in it; in one place the street is blocked up by a group of musicians, around whom a group of idlers gather; in another a peddler attracts the crowd, showing the stuffs which he carries on his shoulders; another man, his fingers covered with rings for sale, displays them in the eyes of customers. Often we are stopped on our way by flocks of sheep and goats, or camels laden with great stones or beams'of timber, that we encounter as we pass. The greater part of the passengers in the streets are mounted on donkeys. How often in Cairo have I seen the well-known picture of the “Flight, into Egypt” reproduced! Upon a donkey is a veiled woman, with a child in her arms; by her side a man with a white beard, wearing a long robe, holding in one hand a stick and resting the other upon the neck of the beast, to guide and urge him. But there is one point in which the tableaux vivant of which I am speaking differs from that of the pictures; that is, that in the East the women do pot sit on the animals they

ride, as ours do, but bestride them like men. When they go on foot they generally carry their children astride upon their shoulders, the little creatures leaning with both hands upon the heac of its mother. It is a picture less familiar to us than the other, but not less attractive. — Bevel’s Egrpt.

A Considerate Man.

“Charged wid habin’ two wives, is I?” asked an old negro of the Magistrate before whom he had been arranged. “Yes,” replied the Judge. “Are you guilty or not guilty ?” “Wall, we’ll sorter hafter study ’bout dem facts ap’ ’vestigate ’em a leetle. It’s owin’ ter what sorter man yer leabs it ter wfcuder ur not I’se ’siderei. guilty.” “Have you two living wives?” “Whut does yer ’spose I wants wid a dead wife, Judge. Doan draw me in dis cou’t-house ’spectin’ ter fine me a fool. Doan ’sinuate dat de time what I hab spent at a night-school hab been flung away.” “Well, old man, if you have two living wives you have violated the law and merit a term in the penitentiary.” “Doan git fracshus an’ dem'n a man ’fore yer knows all de sacks. Some time ago I married Tildy Smith, a mighty likely ’oman. She was a mighty faithful wife, a good pusson as I eber seed, but somehow she finally tuck a dislikement ter me. She was a good ’oman, as I tells yer, but one mawnin’ she cussed me. I can stan’ anything but bein’ cussed. Es yerse’f wuster set up dar an’ cuss me, I doan keer how yer is, I’d hit yer, sho’. Wall, when de ’oman cussed me, I sorter slapped her down. Airter dis, she didn’t seem ter lub me quite so well, ’cause when I felt bad an’ wanted ter chunk her ’roun’ fur ’musement, she got outer my way. Dat wasn’t no way ter do, but she was still a good ’oman. One day she tuck sick an’ sont fur her sister ’Liza. She kep’ er gittin’ wus an’ ’gunter talk ’bout dyin’‘ One ebenin’ she called me an’ sez, sez she, ‘Jasper, I’se mighty nighty nigh gone, an’ kain’t lib till mawnin’. I knows dat yer kain’t git along widout a good wife, an’ jis as I’se dyin’, when I’se jis alive, I wants ter see yer married. I knows dat yer’s al’ers lubed sister ’Liza, and now I axes yer ter marry her.’ I agreed ter dis, merely ter gratify de dyin’ ’oman, an’ ’sides dat, ’Liza was a mighty likely gal. Wife she kep er gittin wus, an’ airter a while 1 sont fur de preacher an’ de license. Da got dar jis as Tildy seemed ter be drawin’ her las’ brtef. Me and ’Liza stood by de bed, an’ when Tildy gaped fur de las’ time de preacher married me and ’Liza. Jes’ as de ceremony was ’formed, Tildy she hopped outen de bed an’ says, * Oh, yes, I’se got yer now! Hit me de udder day, did yer? Now I’se got yer, an’ is a gwine ter sen’ yer ter dmpenitentiary fur habin’ twQ wives.’ Dat’s de way it was, Jedge, an’ I’d like ter know at dis present writin’ whut de law is gwine ter do about it?” “You have violated the law, old man, and must suffer the consequences.” “Dat look's mighty hard. It do seem dat de law ain’t got no respeck fur a man’s private affairs. Stan’s aside an’ lets two wimun git away wid a man an’ den, ’stead ob showin’ sympathy, jumps on ter de man. Now, Jedge, doan yerse’f believe dat any two wimun can git away wid one po’ man ?” “That’s a fact,” the Judge replied. “One woman is bad enough; but two, ah, Lord! You may go, old man.”— Arkcinsaw Traveler.

Primitive Jewish Weddings.

The primitive Jews do not appear to have performed any definite ceremonies at the wedding, yet they had some sort of a ratification of the vows of thfi espousal. The day before the wedding the bride took a bath, which then, as in more modern times, was a somewhat formal procedure. The bride-groom on his wedding day wa3 arrayed in his most gorgeous attire, wearing on his head either a turban or gold or silver crown, and sometimes one of flowers or leaves. He was also highly perfumed with myrrh and frankincense. The bride wore a long veil which covered ler from head to foot, indicative of her submission to her husband, a girdle and a chaplet of gold or silver. The time of the ceremony was generally in the evening, and the bridegroom, accompanied by his friends, and musicians and torch-bearers, went to her house and brought her and her party to his own or his father’s house, amid shouts and sounds of joy. At the bridegroom’s house a feast was given, after which followed music and dancing, the male guests dancing around the bridegroom and the women around the bride. When a virgin married, parched corn was circulated among the guests to suggest the hope of fruitfulness and plenty. The last act of the J ewish wedding ceremony was leading the woman, still veiled, to the bed-chamber, where a canopy, sometimes a bower of roses and myrtles, was awaiting.—Cincinnati Enquirer.

Curious Experiment.

Some few months ago I filled a white glass lamp, of a globular shape, with clear spring water, placed it in the window at about 10 o’clock of a cleat morning, in a position to recieve the rays of the sun. In one minute, a piece of black silk .which I had placed within half an inch of the glass, and in the focus, became ignited. The rays of the sun can thus be collected through a body of clear water, and a common white glass lamp may be made to serve the purpose of a burning lens. I placed in the same lamp, suspended by a thread in the water, several colored glass beads. A little distance from the lamp I fixed a sheet of white paper. The rays of the sun passing through the water and the beads, threw upon the surface of the paper a variety of the most beautiful colors that imagination can picture.— Exchange. If Lord Bacon, as some literary cranks assert, wrote the plays attributed to Shakspeare merely as a recreation from laborious toil, it is a great pity he didn’t recreate more and toil less. The first patent on record was taken out by Samuel Hopkins, in 1790, sor s making pearl ashes. Then, in 1791, Pollard got a patent for spinning cotton by power.

HUMOR.

A miss-fit— Hysterics. A BLACK BABE —A Hottentot. Against the grain—Rust and rata. Off on a tear—The tail of a coat. Out at the elbow—A disconnected stove pipe. To doctors : Any patient worth knowing is worth knowing well. A gentleman with an eruption of the scalp acknowledges with sorrow that there is indeed plenty of rheum at the top. The mill owner who turned the firehose upon some of his disorderly employes explained his conduct by saying he was only washing his hands. Teacher: “Can you tell me which is the olfactory organ ?” Pupil frankly answers: “No, sir.” Teacher: “Correct ” Pupil goes off in a brown study. A rmJE peach in an orchard crew Of emerald hue—so rare Our baby on that peach did chew And climbed the golden stair. An amateur singer in Chenango county, N. Y., frightened a pair of canary birds to death. It must have been a clear case of killing two birds with one’s tone. WheN Neptune wants to flirt with Mother Earth, he gently waves the sea acrpss her bosom.— Whitehall Times. And then invites her to the bank-wet. New Yqj'k News. A Professor of the Allopathic school explains the Homeopathic theory of “Similia similibus curantur” by saying: “If a patient has a broken head, hit him again with a brickbat.”

Under certain circumstances it makes a man feel mean to have people give him a wide berth, but somehow it never does when he is traveling on a steamboat.—Burlington Free Press. It’s all right to promise folks the sweetest of music in the next world, but it would be more comforting if they were also promised the capacity for appreciating it.— Boston Post. “Sanded Strawberries” is a new game which is i>layed at the table when the strawberries have been properly prepared for the palate. Tim game is to guess whether the sand came with the berries or the sugar. Old gent—“Ah, Mrs. 8., did you keep a diary during your visit to the country?” Mrs. 8., indignantly—“No, sir, I didn’t. The family bought milk from the neighbors.— Cincinnati Traveler. The difference between the business of a circus advance agent and a druggist seems to be this: the first spends much of his time in the posting of his bills; the latter in boasting his pills.— Pittsburgh Telegraph. “What a fine-looking man that is!” said one gentleman to another, noticing a face and form such as would attract attention anywhere. “Yes,” was the reply; “he looks like an encyclopedia, but he talks like a primer.” The average young lady wants at least four feet of seat in a street-car for a ride of six blocks, but she will ride half a day Sunday squeezed into a buggy-seat beside her young man and not find the least fault. Why are they so inconsistent? A damsel beset for her photograph, By a vapid youth of the genus calf, Agrec-U at last the boon to grunt. To the great delight of the gay gallant. ‘‘Oh, thanks! ” paid he. “ 1 soma day shall Plead for the fair anginal! ” And rdguishly shaking her jaunty head, “I’ll give you the negative, then,” she said. Wasp. “Now I want to know,” said a man whose veracity has been questioned by an angry acquaintance, “just why you call me a liar. Be frank, sir, for frankness is a golden-trimmed virtue. Just as a friend, now tell me why you called me a liar?” “Called you a liar because you are a liar,” the acquaintance replied. “That’s what I call frankness. Why, sir, if this rule were adopted, over lalf of the difficulties would be settled without trouble, and in our case there would have been trouble but for our willingness to meet each other half way.”— Arkansaw Traveler.

A Deserted Village.

In the very heart of the Adirondack wilderness is located what is known as “the deserted village.” Fifty years ago 90,000 acres of land were purchased by a man named Henderson, and other capitalists, a St. Francis Indian having disclosed to the party that the region was rich in ore. A blast-furnace, a forge, a saw-mill, tenement-houses, a store, a school-house and a bank were erected, and hundreds of thousands of dollars expended in cutting roads, and and other improvements. Operations were carried on twenty-four years. In 1845 Henderson was accidentally shot dead, and five years later business was suddenly suspended. The ponderous water-wheel and the machinery are just where they stopped thirty-three years ago, Wheelbarrows and tools lie around as though operations had been discontinued only yesterday. The village is now the headquarters of a New York sporting club, and the greater part of the year Myron Buttles, agent of the club and his family are the only inhabitants of this once busy spot,

Sunset Cox.

The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch says of the Hon. Samuel S. Cox, who was in 1853-54 editorial writer for the Columbus Statesman: “It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was just dipping below the horizon. Sunset Cox rushed into the room. ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘did you see that sunset? It’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.’ And, seizing some paper from the proof press and leaning over the imposing-stone, he wrote the famous pen-picture that gave him the life-long sobriquet of ‘Sunset* Cox. The article was taken to the compositors and put In type piece by piece,-and it appeared in that evening’s number of the paper. ”

Paints and Paint-Brushes.

The wise mother, says the Christian Intelligencer, keeps sometning in reserve to amuse the little invalid who cannot go out to-d|ay with the others, or to vary the entetainment of the stormy season. Paints and bruefhes are very delightful, especially if they are not allowed to be in use all the time, so that their freshness is not lost. I have seen children pass hours of ecstasy, when allowed to cover the prints in an old atlas at their own sweet will.