Oh, my Maria! Alas! she married another. They frequently do. I hope she is happy-because I am. — Some people are not happy. I have noticed that.

A gentleman friend of mine came to me one day with tears in his eyes. I said, "Why these weeps?" He said he had a mortgage on his farm-and wanted to borrow $200. I lent him the money and he went away. Some time afterward he returned with more tears. He said he must leave me forever. I ventured to remind him of the $200 he borrowed. He was much cut up. I thought I would not be hard upon him—so told him I would throw off $100. He brightened - shook my hand- and said, - "Old friend - I won't allow you to outdo me in liberality I'll throw off the other hundred."

I like Music. I can't sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even than I am.

I met a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth — not a tooth in his head — yet that man could play on the bass drum better than any man I ever met. He kept a hotel. They have queer hotels in Oregon. I remember one where they gave me a bag of oats for a pillow - I had nightmares of course. In the morning the landlord said, — “How do you feel old hoss-hay?" - I told him I felt my oats. As a manager I was always rather more successful than as

an actor.

Some years ago I engaged a celebrated Living American Skeleton for a tour through Australia. He was the thinnest man I ever saw. He was a splendid skeleton. He didn't weigh anything scarcely - and I said to myself — the people of Australia will flock to see this tremendous cu

riosity. It is a long voyage - as you know - from New York to Melbourne - and to my utter surprise the skeleton had no sooner got out to sea than he commenced eating in the most horrible manner. He had never been on the

ocean before- and he said it agreed with him - I thought so! I never saw a man eat so much in my life. Beef, mutton, pork he swallowed them all like a shark-and between meals he was often discovered behind barrels eating hard-boiled eggs. The result was that, when we reached Melbourne, this infamous skeleton weighed sixtyfour pounds more than I did!

I thought I was ruined - but I wasn't. I took him on to California - another very long sea voyage - and when I got him to San Francisco I exhibited him as a fat man.

This story hasn't anything to do with my entertainment, I know but one of the principal features of my entertainment is that it contains so many things that don't have anything to do with it.

JIM BLUDSO, OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE

By permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of this author's work

BY JOHN HAY

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Because he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit

Of livin' like you and me.

Whar have you been for the last three

year

That you haven't heard folks tell

How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the "Prairie Belle"?

Is all pretty much alike,

One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;

A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,

But he never flunked, and he never lied,

I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,·
To treat his engine well;

Never be passed on the river;

To mind the pilot's bell;

And if ever the "Prairie Belle" took fire,·

A thousand times he swore,

He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,

The "Movastar was a better boat,

But the "Belle" she wouldn't be passed. And so she come tearin' along that night The oldest craft on the line

With a nigger squat on her safety valve, And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she cleared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,

And quick as a flash she turned, and made For that willer-bank on the right.

66

There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out,

Over all the infernal roar,

"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last galoot's ashore."

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat

Jim Bludso's voice was heard,

And they all had trust in his cussedness,

And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,

And Bludso's ghost went up alone

In the smoke of the "Prairie Belle."

He weren't no saint, but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,

'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shake hands with him.

THE TRIAL OF ABNER BARROW

From The Boy Orator of Zepata City" in "The Exiles and Other Stories." Copyrighted, 1894, Harper and Brothers. Reprinted with permission

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Abe Barrow had been closely associated with the early history of Zepata; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens. His fight with Thompson had been a fair fight - as those said who remembered it - and Thompson

was a man they could well spare; but the case against Barrow had been prepared by the new and youthful district attorney, and the people were satisfied and grateful.

Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called, turned slowly on his heels, and swept the court room carelessly with a glance of his clever black eyes. The moment was his.

"This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata city of to-day. He comes to us a relic of the past — a past that was full of hardships and glorious efforts in the face of daily disappointments, embitterments and rebuffs. But the part this man played in that past lives only in the court records of that day. This man, Abe Barrow, enjoys, and has enjoyed, a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and boast that you were afraid to touch him- afraid, gentlemen — and children and women will point after him as the man who has sent nine others into eternity, and who yet walks the streets a free man. And he will become, in the eyes of the young and the weak, a hero and a god.

"For the last ten years, your honor, this man, Abner Barrow, has been serving a term of imprisonment in the state penitentiary; I ask you to send him back there again for the remainder of his life. Abe Barrow is out of date. This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city where he left a prairie town; a bank where he spun his roulettewheel; this magnificent courthouse instead of a vigilance