pathy: "I hope that the public will counte- occasion to shock patriotism and worry the nauce me, as my misfortunes are not occasioned | by any want of industry on my part, but by too hospitable, friendly, and generous a temper."

SOME clergymen of the Episcopal Church, strong in the consciousness of elocutionary powers, and with a mistaken idea of being duly impressive, are given to reading the Ten Commandments to their people in stern, deep, menacing tones, like small thunders of Sinai. "Thou shalt do no mur-r-r-der-r-r" offers them an especial opportunity to come out with blood-curdling effect. A late criticism upon one of them would take their breath away:

"He reads the Commandments," said an amused clerical brother, "as if he himself had recently enacted them, and was determined to have them enforced!"

THE following comes from Newport:

Bishop Clark, of Rhode Island, has recently finished a sea-side villa, built out of the munificent proceeds of his contributions to Bonner's Ledger. He was at a loss for a name which should gracefully acknowledge the soil from which his new roof-tree had sprung. | After much ingenious twistification therein, and the bursting of many puns, he laid bare the true nature of the ground. The witty prelate's summer address when off duty is "Bon Ledge."

LAST year a certain lady in London, of more wealth than education, was anxious to be shown Mr. Ashmead Bartlett and his fiancée. Her wish was gratified. She was asked the other day had she seen them recently. "No," she replied, "not since they were married. When I saw them last she was only his financier."

old shams of economy by declaring that the war of independence was a mistake, and that our people would have been happier if we had remained subject to England. This brought out a gushing old country patriot, who, after exhausting invective on the scapegraces who had riled him, majestically waved his hand toward the portrait of George Washington over the Speaker's desk, and exclaimed, "Such, at least, young men, was not the sentiments of the gentleman on the wall."

WE have before us a postal card addressed to the sheriff of Skamania County, Cascades, Washington Territory, on which is printed a card signed Christen Paulsen, Evanston, Wyoming Territory, offering $5 reward for any information respecting his wife and five children (giving names, ages, etc.), who started for Washington Territory two years ago. The card was posted on the post-office door, and our correspondent was about to copy it, when the postmaster said: "You can take it; it has been there long enough. I don't want to aid a man to ascertain the whereabouts of his wife and children who only valued them at eightythree cents a head, and waited a year before advertising."

COLONEL WOODS, the oldest practicing lawyer in Iowa, and familiarly known as "Old Timber," was recently called upon as an expert to prove the reasonable value of certain services rendered by a brother attorney. On his direct examination he stated in a rather careless manner that he had been practicing

THE 22d of February is a Kentucky holiday; but the Kentucky Legislature is, or a few years ago was, an economical body, and did not al-law in the Territory and State of Iowa for the ways readily waste a whole day on the memory of the Father of his Country. One 22d some of the more frugal members, who were chiefly economical in the record, insisted on meeting, so that the world might know they had not missed a day, and at an early hour proposed to adjourn, so that they might enjoy the holiday. This provoked a debate, in

last fifty or sixty years. Upon cross-exami-
nation a young attorney, whom we will call
Charley, undertook to have some sport at "Old
Timber's" expense, with this result:
"How long did you say you had practiced
law in this country?"

"Fifty or sixty years, sir."

"Well, will you state what was the characwhich some mischievous young members tookter of your practice during the earlier part—

say for the first twenty-five or thirty years in the Territory and State ?"

"Yes, sir. I was then what might be appropriately called an itinerant lawyer."

awful sorry it was your brother; and though I was driven to it, and the law can't touch me, I'm willing to pay you damages. Be kinder fair with me, for Bill was old and tough. About how much do you think is fair?"

"An itinerant lawyer! Will you be so kind, colonel, as to explain to the Court and jury what you mean by the term 'itinerant law-rated across the stove, and replied: yer' ?"

The other wiped a tear from his eye, expecto

"Certainly, sir. In those early days I used to travel around the circuit with the judge, and my business was to try causes for young gentlemen like you, Charley, who had brass enough to undertake a case, but not brains enough to try it."

AT a recent dinner party in Washington, Miss Marie Prescott, who supported Salvini during his late professional tour in this country, gave a specimen of the nice distinctions in the negro dialect of her old Kentucky home. Aunt Susan, of color, was in the habit of supplying the corner grocers with honey. One day, her own supply being exhausted, she went to town to purchase some from one of her own customers. She stopped her rickety wagon in front of the grocery, and called out, "Oh, Mr. Smith, is you got any honey ?"

Mr. Smith replied, "No, Aunt Susan, I don't want any to-day; I have plenty."

He had misapprehended Aunt Susan, who exclaimed, in a higher key, "I didn't ask you isn't you, but is you, got any honey to-day."

IN Mr. Joseph Hatton's To-day in America, recently published in the "Franklin Square Library" by Harper and Brothers, are several anecdotes racy of the soil, which Mr. Hatton heard during his trip to the West. We reproduce a couple:

There is less respect for human life in America than in England, and the humorous history of two strangers, each having murdered the other's relative, may be taken as an illustration in point, with this advantage, that it is an example of the common and ready habit of "capping" an extravagant statement, which is quite a specialty of American humor. The two strangers in question were toasting their shins on opposite sides of a big stove in a ferry waiting-room, and it was noticed that they often looked at each other as if almost certain that they had met before. Finally one of them got up and said:

"Yes, just about ten years ago."

66

"Stranger, where is your dad?"

Been dead these twelve years."
"Died in Nevada, didn't he?"
"Yes, out there somewhere."

"Well, I killed him. I knew you were his son the minute I saw you. He and I were in a mine one day, and as we were going up in a bucket, I saw that the old rope was going to break under the strain. When we were up about two hundred feet, I picked up your old dad and dropped him over. It was bad on him, but it saved me. Now you ate my brother Bill, and I murdered your dad, and I guess we had better call it even, and shake to see who pays for the drinks."

Another legend is of a grocer hungrily wait-
ing for his clerk to return from dinner that he
too might partake of his noonday meal, when
a boy came into the store with a basket in his
hand, and said: "I seed a boy grab up this
'ere basket from the door and run, and I ran
after him, and made him give it up."
"My lad, you are an honest boy."
"Yes, sir."

"And you look like a good boy."
Yes, sir."

แ

"And good boys should always be encouraged. In a box in the back room there are eight dozen eggs; you can take them home to your mother, and keep the basket."

The grocer had been saving up those eggs for days and weeks to reward some one. In rewarding a good boy he also got eight dozen bad eggs carried out of the neighborhood free of cost, and he chuckled as he walked homeward. The afternoon waned, night came and went, and once more the grocer went to his dinner. When he returned, his face wore a contented and complacent smile. His eye caught a basket of eight dozen eggs as he entered the store, and he queried:

"Been buying some eggs?"

"Yes; got hold of those from a farmer's boy," replied the clerk.

"A lame boy with a blue cap ?"
"Yes."

"Two front teeth out?"

"Yes."

The grocer sat down and examined the eggs. The shells had been washed clean, but they were the same eggs which the good boy had taken home the day before.

Stranger," continued the first, seemingly NOT long ago a bright little girl in the Sungreatly affected, "I've sailed with your brother day-school of St. Luke, Mn, New Jersey, Bill. We were wrecked together on the Pa- who was in the Calvary Catechism class, taught cific, and before help came I had to kill and by Miss S- and evidently had reached the eat him. I knew you must be related. I'm bottom facts of the lesson-the creation of

|

man out of the dust of the earth-came run- | Going to the barn one day, he heard some chatning home to her mother, overfull of confidence in the Scripture theory and her own reflective conclusions, and exclaimed: "Oh, mother, I know it is all true what the

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXVIII.-NOVEMBER, 1881.-VOL. LXIII.

IN CORNWALL WITH AN UMBRELLA. ITTLE is left of imaginative simplicity in the English peasantry. The smockfrock is a thing of antiquity; the insular capacity for wonderment that made any

stranger an object of attention in the small villages has vanished in the light which comes from common schools and newspapers-an illumination which often

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

VOL. LXIII.-No. 378.-51