Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1885 — Page 2

* SssfcaSS ',, r 1 he woild wilt go on. I think, ( Just as |t used to do: The clouds will flirt with the moon, The Min wHlhiss theses. —-eThe wind-to the trees will whisper. And l ujh at yon and me, But th- sun will, not shine so bright, The otonds will not stem so white, To one an they Will to two; go I think you had better be kind, Snd I bad b st be true. And let the old tore ro on. Just as It used to do. ' If the whole of s page be read, * If a book bo finished through, Bttll the woild may read on, 1 think, Just as it used to do; For other lovers will con The i age* we have passed, And the treacUerom gold of the binuioe, Will glitter unto thi last. But lids have a lonely look. And one may not read the book, It opt n<only to two; So 1 thtnk yon bad better be kind, And I had best be true, - And let the rc idinß go on. Just as It used to do. If we who have sailed to-ether Flit- ont of each other’s view, , The world will safl on, I think. Just as it used to do. And we may reckon by stars •That flash from different skies. And another of Bove's pirates : - Mar capture my lost prize; But ships long time together Can better the tempest weather ' Than any other two; .. Bo I think you had better be kir* 0 ’ And 1 had best be true, / That we together majr sail, Just as we used to da -Boston Transcript■ “HANNAH BINDING p HOES *” BT ELIZABETH BTOAHTP PHELPS. Within the window’s sea™ recess. Behind a pink gerantu.. She site and sews, and From patient hour, t J patient hour. As woman-like ad “arWeis, Or as a lovely deaf h might h®- ~ A marble death condemned to make A feint at life per»> etual *yWondering, I wd*c*H» pity her, Wandering TgO my restless ways; Content! I thisk the untamed t.oughts, Of tree and solitary days. Until the mJ«yuful bedns To drop up on quiet street, Until npo- 1 the pavement far. There fal* 8 the sonnd of coming feet; A hastening, ardent sound. Tends- 88 hisses on The air,— _ Quick- 88 touched by unseen lip 3, hlus ues :ll ° little s.atne there. woman-like as yonng life Is, *j.d woman-like as joy may be, Tender with oolor, lithe with love, phe starts, transfigured gloriously. Superb in one transcendent glance— Her eyes, I se\ are burning black, My l-ttle neighbor, smiling, turns And throws my unasked pity back. I wonder—ls it worth the while To sit and tew from hour to hour— To sit and sew with eyes of black Behind a pink geranium flower?

THE FAIRFIELD POET.

Tragedy, which is never far from the most prosperous lives, continually trod upon the tenderest-hearted woman in Fairfield. She hated Fairfield as a background to her existence, but there had fate nailed her for life. It was the forlornest of Indiana railroad stations, looking like an ugly scar on the face of a beautifully wooded country, peopled by the descendants of poor white Carolinians and Tennesseeans. The male portion of the community sat on the railroad platform, in yellow jeans, sprawling-their naked toes to the suna whittling and jetting like true tobacco fountains upon the meerschaum-oolored boards. The women might have lived lives of primitive simplicity, dignified by child-bearing and neighborly sympathy with each other, but they stained their human kindness with slander. And this one among them all felt the progress of the age tearing her heartstrings out while her circumstances kept hpr'at a standstill. Ido not say her life would have been more symmetrical or her experience richer if she had lived in the whirl. She was a plain, ground-loving woman who enjoyed the companionship of her fruit trees and /lowers, and worked with her hands. Indeed, crowds annoyed her, and she was undecided what toilettes ought to be made for a large public. The striped silk dresses of her prosperous days, the fringe crape shawls and gimp-edged mantillas, agreed ill with bonnets of the passing season, and she had more respect for what was rich and old than for all your new inventions. Bat she was fiercely ambitious for her children, especially her eldest son, and for him in spite of his misfortune. The younger boy and girl were still leaping like colts upon their few remaining acres, sonnd in limb and wind, with hopes of a future sheathed in their healthy present, when Willie was tall as a man, and far up in his teens. His mother had a picture of him taken when he was going to school in Cincinnati under his uncle’s care. At that tinjp his auburn carls were unshorn, and he was beautiful. A few days before cottons took their terrific rise during the war, Mr. Harbison had stocked in thousands of yards. Those were Fairfield’s best days, and he kept a general store, making money so rapidly - that the lazy people around him felt helplessly injured. He began his fine brick house building on a generous and artistic plan, at the edge of Fairfield, where lie could surround himself with frnit trees, and have fields for his cattle. Whether it is a more distinct misery to bnild the temple of your home and see some one else inhabit it, or to shelter yourself for years in a house yon have not the power of finishing, the latter fete was reserved the H&rbisons. With a crash they came down from what had been Fairfield’s opulence nearly to W level with Fairfield’s poverty. They kept the house and grounds and a meadow, but under snch weight of mortgages that it was comparatively no grief at all to see the ornamental cornices lying around the partly plastered parlors, balustrades, and newel-post standing on end beside the skeleton stairway, and to find the bath-room useless except as a rubbish closet. The man who had employed half of Fairfield was now obliged to become hinSaelf an employe and the general verdict of the world against those who fail was emphasized by communistic‘envy. But the habit of befog a woman of consideration is not easily forgotten. Mrs. Harbison still made the village respect her. She had something to give to the poorest. She was the wife of a man who bad made a fortune before be had lost it, and sat in the State Senate- More than all, She had her children. the eldest of them a continual ’• '

surprise to her. H£ seerued born to stir her pride and tenderness to their depftug, was tall, fair, and Romanfeatured, sh> ah a girl toward .every one but his mother, and so ravenous in mind that he ytnk partly through college when his father's reverse brought him home. Then he was seized with a spotted fever, and approached the next world so olose that he left part of his faculties there, and was never the same Willie he had been before. He could hear nothing, and seldom said an audible word—Mrs. Harbison’s boy, who was made to take the world by storm — and what had . been the shyness of a country-bred youth, became the setapart seclusion of a hoofed and goateared faun. Willie Harbison was to be seen whirring as noiseless as a bat upon his bicycle across the open ground, at dusk. He was met coming from the woods, silent as an Iffilian^andJus e<yes were on everything in- nartu or sky except the hwtnwh beings just before him. •Whatever were the faults of Fairfield, ’ TBd and respected' Willie Harbison and humored his self-withdrawal. And he loved Fairfield with a partiality which saw mere picturesqueness in the row of whittling men, and various forms of- motherhood or sisterhood in the women. He would dismount from his wheel to let the boys tilt with it at the old warehouse. He loved the woods; he loved Wildcat and Kitten Creeks, which plowed rock-bedded channels through the woods; and what joy in life he fished out of those waters Willie himself only knew. He loved to watch from the mill on a clear morning that plume of steam tbe south-bound train sent aronnd the curve, to watch another plume roll over the first, and finally to see the train stand suddenly on the summit of the grade, sharp cut against the sky. All common life was pleasant to him. Who but his mother could be witness that a double nature dwelt under his floury mill clothes ? Willie worked in the mill with his father, where the roar of grinding and bolting, and the whirr of the belts, made silent liveliness about him. This had been bitterness to his mother—her Willie should work with his bead alone; but she accepted it as the result of his physical misfortune. The parlors were Willie’s workshop, in which he sawed, hammered and glued, or put noiseless inventions together. A carpenter’s bench was set before two uncased windows, and his father’s old store desk had fallen to his unmercantile use. Its lock was never opened unless Willie had something which he could force himself to show to his mother. That ripe instant arriving, he sought her in her kitchen, her garden, or her spinning-wheel upstairs, and seized her by the hand. She went with him to the parlors, they fastened the doors, Willie undid his desk, and placed his paper in her fingers. The paper itself was sometimes brown, sometimes the blue cap left -from the store, sometimes gilt-edged note having penciled landscapes along the margins, or the flowers he rhymed of done in water-colors; for his hand was as skillful as his eye was discerning. The poems were usually short, and sensitive jpn rhymS and rhythm. Willie’s themes 'were the common sights and the common pathos or hnmor of the situations in whioh he found the people aronnd him; his interpretation of the slicker’s feelings; his delight in certain thick fleeces of grass; the panorama of sky and field as it marches across his eye; the grotesque though heartily human family party made by old man Parsons 'and his wife, where half of his descendants unable to get into the small house, sat on the fence while the rest ate dinner. Willie was deaf, but he had inward music. Every smooth and liquid stanza was like wine to his mother. She compared his poems to Burns’, and could not find the “Mountain Daisy" a whit better than her poet’s song about the woods in frost. Even Mr. Harbison thought well of Willie’s performance. They were smuggled to him by his mother, and carefully returned to their place when the poet was out of the house. Mr. Harbison knew all that was going on in the world. A dozen times a year he left the grinding of the mill to meet his old chnms at the capital, or to quicken the action" of his blood in Chicago. A couple of stimulating days tinctured and made endurable his month of mill work. A man of luxurious tastes cannot lose his tastes with his means. He was a judge of poets, and said Willie might as well take to poetry as anything, for business did not pay a man of sound faculties in these days. The hum of bees could be heard all aronnd this unfinished brick house growing mossy at the gables, and its shadow was long on the afternoon sunshine. It was that alert and happy time of year when the earth’s sap starts new from winter distillation. You could hear the voices of 1 children calling in play as they loitered home from school; the days were so long that the cows would not come up the pasture until nearly 7 o’clock. Willie trudged across lots to supper. Mrs. Harbison met him at the north sde of the house, having her garden knife and her rake in her hands. She put them on the stepless front-door sill, which had never been and never would be pressed by the foot of an arriving guest. The stone sill was high enough for a seat, and she sat down, tilting her sun-bonnet back, and smiling at Willie. He was floured from head to foot. Little of his boying beauty except its clear innocence remained to him. His nose was large for his head, and on his head the auburn enris were Bhorn to a thin crisping layer. His young sister was putting sup.per on the table in the diningroom, his brother was fisting with another boy on the railroad, and up the cow-lane came his father, with the slow step and somewhat of the ponderous white presence of the walking statue in Don Giovanni But, olosest knit of all this family, mpther and son talked together.' in silence, some birds in the mulberry tree over their heads making the only calling and replying that could be beard. Before Willie i cached her, he held up his bands and signed-in the deaf-mute language.

“The preacher has come back." Mrs, Harbison raised her hands and darted her.fingers into various shape*!, saying thereby, “Did you see him?”w “No,** Willie replied as swiftly, “I only saw bis coffin in tbe wagon, and Nancy Ellen sitting beside it She had to bring him the whole twenty miles from where he died, in a - wagon,” “Because it wasn’t on a railroad?” > Willie nodded. His mother wove on: "Poor Njtticy Ellen! Her father wouldn’ f „\et her have the preacher for r w long, and turned her off when sh.e did marry him. Now she’s a in lier honeymoon, And old man/Martin saying be told her a preache,* as old as himself wasn’t any match, ibr her. Did you see her father ? Ho’W did he act ?” | got into the wagon by the • driver,” said Willie’s fingers. “Well, that was something for him.” “And they drove to his place.” “I suppose he’ll let her come back and live at home now. ” “I wish you had seen Nancy Ellen.” “I’m going to see her after the milking is done.” “Seen her by the preacher,” insisted Willie’s passes. “She looked like a captive coming in chains to Rome.” “Yes, I’ll be bound she did. Every jolt of that twenty miles is stamped in her mind.” . “I wished,” flashed Willie, “I knew what the preacher sung to. himself all along the road.” “What a notion! You’ll have to fix it up in poetry now, won’t you?” Willie shook his head many times and reddened. “You said the preacher used to sing home from meeting ifiTthe dark.” . ' “Yes he dirl,” affirmed Mrs. Harbison. ’’And Nancy Ellen used to listen for him to go by their place.” Their talk paused, and Willie looked up at the birds in the mulberry. Having afterward caught his mother’s eye, he wove out slowly: “When in the tree above his head The sap goes tingling through the bark, She will remember it wai dead, And hear him singing in’the dark. “Oh, Willie, is that the first verse or the last? Have you written it down?” Willie smiled shyly, putting his head dowu towards one shoulder without making any reply. His mother urged him with eager fingers. "Print it in some place when you get it done. Nancy Ellen would be please.” “I am not an obituary poet,” waved Willie. “But that’s so good.” Mrs. Harbison moved her lips, repeating it to herself. “And ain’t you ever going to publish anything you write? I’ve heard of people getting money for it.” Willie uttered a gentle sneer. He laughed at his mother in a way that always made her laugh with him. “But if you would let your father fix up your writings,” she continued, repeating an old plea, “and send them to some publishing house, I know they would put them in a book for you.” The gate, weighted by a stone, slammed to behind his father coming to the evening meal. v But before his mother rose, Willie found time to make dance before her eves the characters indicating this promise: “Some day I’ll get my bicycle and ride *nd ride unti/L I cospe tjML publisher. If you miss me, youTFknow where I’ve gone. You can just say to yourself, ‘He’s off having his poems published.’ Wait till then, mother, that will be soon enough.” “You’D never db it,” said his mother, having no idea how near the time was. She gave her family their supper and helped to milk the cows. The oows were fragrant of pasture grass and of fern along the fence corners. She thought of Willie’s stanza when the milk first sang in the pad, and kept repeating ■until the rising froth drowned all sounds of the lashing streams quite at her pail’s brim. When the house was tidy and full of twilight stillness, Mrs. Harbison put on a clean apron and took her sun bonnet to make her caU of condolence. It is likely they-would want watchers at Martin’s and she was ready to do anything. She had helped bear the burden of life and death so long in Fairfield that illness, a new baby or the mysterious breathless presence in any house was a pertemptory invitation to her. The boys were playing hide-and-seek around the warehouse, and as she crossed the open lot she saw the usual line of wise men sitting on the edge of the platform with their legs across the rail, as if they had all agreed to makfe an offering of their feet to the juggernaut of the next passing train. Willie darted like a bat x»r a night bird on his bioycle far up and far down the smooth wagon road. Now he took a turn, and came spinning among the boys, scattering them before him, and escaping as often as they chased him. In one of these excursions he crossed his mother’s way. The lamps were just lighted in the station; and they poured full over his laughing face. Besides, the last red streaks and high sunset lights were not gone out of the sky, and these would have given her more than the silhoutte of Willie. She lifted up her hands and spelled, “are you starting out to hunt a publisher now?” And Willie laughed and nodded, and made her a sign of good-by. The pleasant stillness of the evening fell around her like a blessing as she went on. Fire flies were filling one fiel,d, as if a conflagration nnder that particular ground sent np endless streams of sparks. She smelled the bndding elders, and was reminded of the t le-like bits in her past, fitted oddly together. Martin lived but a few steps beyond the village. She had bqpn talking a mere moment with Nancy Ellen, and had not yet entered the room where the preacher lay, when some other neighbor came in with excitement, and said lond. over the whispered talk of the mourning house, that something was wrong down at the depot. “That express has run into something again,” proclaimed the neighbor, “and looks by the wav folks run, as if it wasn’t a cow this, time. Euough oows and pigs has been fciUed by that Tailroad." -’v ■ ; / : “I haven’t Seen the express,”/said Mrs. Harbison, feeling her head flbll of wheels. “14 was all quiet when JL was there s minute ago. 1 * ; 1 “Hie express baa stopped. / Good

3MSB&* i Ito> ® iijHl *fir Olj tll6 track, I tell ye i fity hbor! Willie’s ~ x not be Willie. -He was AonsM M . firrqity, and so cautious ' ’’.jjg had long ceased to be auiioV ja about him. He knew the times opftl the trains with nice Yet she started j from ‘fee house without speaking an cither word, and ran until she reached fee crowd. The engine stood hissing; it confronted her with the glare of its eye, a horrid and renforselesa fate, ready to go its way with bell-clanging and all cheerful noise, no matter who had been ground under its wheels. The conductor was just stepping on board, for time and ord erg wait for nothing. The engineer had already climbed back to his cab; he saw a running woman kneel down on the platform and draV the boy up from the boards to rest in her arms. Having seen that much, the engineer turned away his head and wept out loud; and the train moved oh bearing pale faces that looked backward %s long as they could discern anything. Mrs. Harbison had stumbled over Willie’s bent wheel first. When she found him indeed laid in the midst of the crowd, she did not believe it. He was not mangled, His bones were sound—she felt them with a fiercely quick hand. There was no mark about him excepting a dirty-looking spot on the temple. “Willie,” she said, shaking him. “Willie! Willie!” “We’ll have to carry him home,” said her husband at her side, his voice sounding far off, as if it came strained through some dense medium. She looked up and could not understand it. “He’s knocked senseless,” she exclaimed. “Why doesn’t somebody bring water?” “He never knowed what hurt him,” cautiously said one villager to another. “The train was goin’ so fast, and he came up from among the houses onto it so fast that it was done in a fiash.” “And I don’t never want to see no better boy than Willie Harbison was,” responded the other. But only his mother—when she had him at home lying in that pomp of death with which we all shall impress beholders—could have pronounced the true oration over him. Through her dumb tragedy she wanted to make deaf mute signs to some intelligence that here lay one of nature’s poets, with a gift virgin and untarnished. He had never hunted a public. His public was the woods and sky, and his critic one fond woman. Not a line of unsatisfied ambition marked his placid face. He had lived a humble, happy life, and sung for the sake cf expression, not for the sake of praise. He had, after all, only gone to find the best publisher, and his mother could always hear him “singing in the dark.”—Harper’s Bazaar.

Wanted to Drown His Sorrows.

A dark look of despair was on liis countenance as he came slowly into the office and sat down upon a convenient fauteuil. There was a sort of wild glare in his eye, which might to the causal Observer indicate the* presence of pn overpowering and deep-seated sorrow, or an undigested dinner. “Is this the ediatorial room?” “Precisely,” answered the religious editor. “The place where so much rope is given to soaring intellects ?” 0 “Exactly.” “And do you know that autumn is here ?” “There has been a slight prejudice that way.” “That the crimson leaves have been mournfully floating from the trees, and sighed as they left the naked branches. That, like memories of the past, they have charmed the senses for a moment, and then sunk down in a melancholy oblivion ?” “I guess so. ” “The cadence of the autumn wind has been sorrowful to my mind. It sounds like sweet strains of music from a distance; something like standing outside of a theatre without a ticket and listening to the orchestra inside.” “Well?” “I wanted to tell you. My life is something like this autumn. Through the halls of memory there comes a whisper which tells me that summer Jras flown, and that a faint odor of her lovely flowers is borne upon the filmy wings of bitter recollection. Did you ever look upon a package of old letters, untouched for years, yellowed with age, and through the musty pages catch a faint scent of mignonet that brought a thought of dainty fingers which traced the words of a letter to you in the long ago?” “Hardly.” ■— “I have. My life has been steeped in misfortune, and I have tried to drown the bitter thoughts in the flowing bowl. Such is my purpose now. J wish to stay the uprising flood of thoughts which only brings unconquerable sorrow. But I have only five cents. A glass of whiskey costs ten. "Will you give me a nickel ?” The office-steps are steep, and, when he landed at the bottom, the bitter recollection of a past grief had given place to a present and t painful sorrow.— Rochester Democrat.

Peel and Thackery.

I must tell you an anecdote of Sir Bobby. If you read the list of people congregated to see his pictures, you ■will have seen there not only all the artists, drawing-masters, men of science, but reporters and writers for journals. Thackery, who furnishes the wit for Punch , told Milnes that the exminister came up to him and said, with the blandest smile: “Mr. Thackery, I am rejoiced to see you. I have read with delight every line you ever -wrote.” Thackery would have been better pleased if the compliment had not inoluded all his works; so, to turn the subject, he observed that it must be a great gratification to live surrounded bysuch interesting works of art Sir R. replied: “I can assure you that it tdoes not afford me the same satisfaction as finding myself in such society as yours!* This seeking popularity by fulsome praise wiß not suoceed.—Leiter of Lady Ashburton to J. W. Qroleer.

WHAT THEY SHOULD LEARN. if gEfo-a. , , A (HIU, SHOULD LEABNS: T Qb&*r. To cook. ' f : 4 • Tpmend.—y. ' To be gentle. To value time. . To dress neatly. To keep a secret. To mind a baby. To avoid idleness. To be self reliant. To darn stockings. To respect old age. To make good bread.. To keep a house tidy. . i To make a home happy. To be above gossiping. To humor a cross man. To control her’femper. To take care of the sick. To sweep down the cob-webs. To marry a man for .his worth, To be a help-mate to a husband. To keep clear of flash literature. To take plenty of active exercise. To see a mouse without screaming. To read some books besides novels. To be light-hearted and fleet-footed. To wear shoes that w'on’t cramp her feet. i To be a womanly woman under all circumstances. A BOY SHOULD LEARN I (According to the ideas of tae rising generation.) To lie. To swear. To drink. To play pool. To play poker. To chew tobacco. To smoke cigarettes. To beat a tailor’s bill. To live without working. To “mash” girls on the avenue. To affect the la-de-da articulation. To carry a cane and bang his hair. To lounge about the theater lobbies. To wear pointed shoes and escape corns. To twist himself into skin-tight trousers. To slander the good name of his young,lady acquaintances. To be a combination of the damphool and knave generally. THE PARENTS SHOULD LEAEN: - To be firm. To be patient. To give good advice. To set a good example. To make home pleasant. To scold as little as possible. To join in home amusements. To remember that they were once young. To give their children a good education. To have their boys learn some good trade. To instil in their children habits of neatness and economy. To have the gilds acquire something besides accomplishments. To have them take the bible as their guide in life. To have them respect age, and be kind and gentle to everybody. To try and teach them to do just right. It is a big job, and parents have their hands full; but it iathejr duty, and the rfcward Sonffes wit^TfftPage.

A Dog’s Instinct.

The dog’s instinct of guarding property is a purely artificial instinct, created by man for his own purposes; and it is now so strongly ingrained in the intelligence of the dog that it is unusual to find any individual animal in which it is wholly absent. Thus, we know without any training a dog will allow a stranger to pass by his master’s gate without molestation; but that as soon as the stranger passes within the gate, and so trespasses on what the dog knows to be his master’s territory, the animal immediately begins to bark in order to give his master notice of the invasion. And this lea ls me to observe that barking is itself an artificial instinct, developed, I believe, as an offshoot from the more general instinct of guarding property. None of the wild species of dog are known to bark, and there we must conclude that barking is an artificial instinct, acquired for the purpose of notifying to his master the presence of thieves or enemies. I may further observe that this instinct of guarding extends to the formation of an instinctive idea on the part of the animal of itself constituting part of the property. If, for instance, a friend give you temporary charge of his dog, even although the dog may never have seen you before, observing that you are hi 3 master’s friend, and that his master intends you to take charge of him, he immediately transfers his allegiance from his master to you, as to a deputed owner, and will then follow you through any number of crowded streets with the utmost confidence. Thus, whether we look to the negative or to the positive influence of domestication upon the psychology .of the dog, we must conclude that a change has been wrought, so profound that the whole mental constitution of the animal now presents a more express reference to the needs of another and his enslaving animal than it does to his own. Indeed, we may say that there is no one feature in the whole psychology of the dog which has been left unaltered by the influence of man, except those instincts which, being neither useful nor harmful to man, have never been subject to his operation— for instance, as the instinct of burying food, turning round to make a bed before lying down, etc Century.

Painful Suspense.

"My dear/' he said as he entered the house, "who is that gentleman across the street?" "I am not sure, but'l think he is an old beau of mine.” “How long has he been waving his handkerchief ?” "Oh, more than half an hour.” "Is he faying to flirt with you?” "That’s just what annoys me. He may mean it for me, or the lady in the bay-window above. If it’s for me I ought to know it, and if it’s for her Til never speak to the shame-faced thing so long as I live! Oh, George! you don’t know now vexatious it is to have roomers about you? I wish we had a little cottage of our own.” —Free Pt**B. ' ' ', , T \

Toast Drinking.

The present Warden of York county is to be congratulated. He has the courage of his convictions. He is a total abstainer, itad he therefore feels that he must be hospitable without supplying his guests with “strong drinks.” On Tuesday last he gave the usual “Warden’s supper;” avowed his principles like a man; managed everything to the satisfaction of all present, and showed that a man may be successfully hospitable, and his guests both happy and hilarious without the asaistanoj of “strong waters.” If the warden bad gone a step further, and abolished altogether the idiocy of toast drinking, he would have put another feather in his cap, and wonld have an additional claim to being regarded as a sensible, level-headed man. ~ There is something intensely absurd in toast and health-drinking in any oase, but it reaches the acme of foolishness when gravely proceeded with in “honest water.” The custom is heathenish and bacchanalian in its origin, and its upholders and practicers have always taken good care that there should be no mistake as to whence it sprang. Altogether it is more honored in the breach than the observance, and as it is well for sensible people to show that they are not such dullards as not to be able to be pleasantly convivial without help of artificial stimulants, So it is equally desirable that they should be able to manage their conviviality without having recourse to empty ceremonies which remind one of nothing but religious fetichism, or boisterous debauchery. It seems that the history of these toasts is simply this: It was customary in the days of Charles 11, or earlier, to put a piece of toasted bread in a jug of ale. hence called “a toast and a tankard.” It happened that on one occasion, so goes the story, one of the “professional beauties” of the Merry Monarch’s time, when that phrase had even a still more sisrnfieant meaning than it has at present, was in a large public bath, when one of the crowd of enthusiastic admirers and on-lookers took a glassful of water in which the fair lady stood, and drank with it her health to the company. A gay, half-tipsv young fellow in the company offered to jump in, and declared that though he liked not the liquor, he would have the “toast.” Begun in this characteristic fashion, the custom for a while was confined to “toasting" favorite beauties, or mistresses in private parties, till, in course of time, these toasts were given tra all imaginable subjects at public drinking meetings, accompanied by and with all the idiocies of “hip, hip, hurrah, and “all the honors,” advancing as meh “had well drank” to still more uproarious folly. To cap the climax of absurdity, some toasts had to be drunk, not with uproarious noise, but in “solemn silence.” And to think all this tomfoolery having arisen from a brainless loafer drinking the health of a questionable beauty in a glass of not surpassingly clean water. —Toronto Globe.

Had It Pasted in His Hat.

“Captain, will you allow a man who •is traveling and lnndless to cross the Terry ?” asked u nomad of the faretaker of the Federal street ferry in Camden. Such requests are common, and generally meet with the same answer: “No, travel to Trenton, and cross on the bridge.” “I will not travel up to Trenton, but I’m going to cross this ferry, and right through this gate wiih your permission without a cent, in jnst one hour and twenty minutes,” replied the tramp haughtily. “I want to call your attention to the fact that it is jnst 7 o’clock,” added the wanderer. An officer of the company put the man away from the gate. The boats leave every ten minutes, and, as each one departed, the rover wonld step ug to the gate and, in the presence of the collector, make memorandum in a small book. The eighth boat had left, when the tramp boldly stepped up to the collector and handed him one of the official legislative hand-books of New Jersey, and under the head of extracts from laws regulating steam-ferry companies, pointed to a paragraph. The collector read: “And be it further enacted that auy traveler or wayfarer who shall make application for a free transmission on such boats, and who publicly avers that he or she is destitute and without means, shall be freely carried on any of the boats herein provided lor, after the said boat or boats have made an eighth trip across such river following such application.” The collector was astonished, and the man passed on to the boat. When she had left the slip, he turned to a man near him, who had witnessed a part of the maneuver, and said: “I tell yon a ‘typo’ can’t be beat. That is an extract from the New York law that I set up and took a proof on fine paper. jDo yon see how nicely it is pasted in there?’’ —Philadelphia Hews.

Washington as a Long-Distance Thrower.

It was on Union Square that a man whose histronic yawp is well know all over the land told the following chestnut to the boys. Lord Coleridare, when he visited this country, stood with William M. Evarts on the banks of the Potomac, opposite the City of Washington. “Do you know, Evarts, said his Lordship,” “I have heard George Washington was a man of great physical prowers. I was to 1 d that he once threw a silver dollar from this spot across the Potomac.” s “You must remetober, my Lord,” said Mr. Evarts, “that a dollar would go a great deal further in those days than it would now.” The gloom that the recital of this old story had thrown over the gang was wafted away, by our friend in the long ulster, who said: “I would suggest that Evarts might have said something else.” “What?” “He might have said; T never heard that he threw a silver dollar across the Potomac, but history tells us that he threw an English sovereign across the the Atl.ntia’ "—Texas Siftings. A bullet thrown at a girl in"a Lowell cartridge factory, to awaken her, lodged in her ear and caused her death.