Part 6

A rather loquacious individual was endeavouring to draw an old man into conversation, but hitherto without much success, the old fellow having sufficient discernment to see that his object was to make a little sport for the passengers at his expense. At length says loquacious individual: "I suppose you consider Down East a right smart place; but I guess it would puzzle them to get up quite so thick a fog as we are having here this morning, wouldn't it?" "Well," said the old man, "I don't know about that. I hired one of your Massachusetts chaps to work for me last summer, and one rather foggy mornin' I sent him down to the meadow to lay a few courses of shingle on a new barn I was finishin' off. At dinner-time the fellow came up, and, sez he, 'That's an almighty long barn of yourn.' Sez I, 'Not very long.' 'Well,' sez he, 'I've been to work all this forenoon, and haven't got one course laid yet.' 'Well,' sez I, 'you're a lazy fellow, that's all I've got to say.' And so after dinner I went down to see what he'd been about, and I'll be thundered ef he hadn't shingled more than a hundred foot _right out on to the fog_."

WHISKERS AND KISSES.--153.

The editress of the _Lancaster Literary Gazette_ says she would as soon nestle her nose in a rat's nest of swingle tow as allow a man with whiskers on to kiss her. We (_Petersburg Express_) don't believe a word of it. The objections which some ladies pretend to have to whiskers all arise from envy. They don't have any. They would if they could; but the fact is, the continual motion of the lower jaw is fatal to their growth. The ladies--God bless them!--adopt our fashion as far as they can. Look at the depredations they have committed on our wardrobes the last few years. They have appropriated our shirt-bosoms, gold studs and all. They have encircled their soft bewitching necks in our standing collars and cravats--driving them to flatties and turn-downs. Their innocent little hearts have been palpitating in the inside of our waistcoats, instead of thumping against the outside, as naturally intended. They have thrust their pretty feet and ankles through our unmentionables, unwhisperables, unthinkaboutables; and they are skipping along the streets in our high-heeled boots. Do you hear, gentlemen?--we say boots!

LITTLES.--154.

Everything is beautiful when it is little (except souls!)--little pigs, little lambs, little birds, little kittens, little children. Little Martin boxes of houses are generally the most happy and cozy; little villages are nearer to being atoms of a shattered paradise than anything we know of. Little fortunes bring the most content, and little hopes the least disappointment. Little words are the sweetest to hear, and little charities fly furthest and stay the longest on the wing. Little lakes are the stillest, little hearts the fullest, and little farms the best tilled. Little books the most read, and little songs the best loved. And when Nature would make anything especially rare and beautiful, she makes it little--little pearls, little diamonds, little dews. Agar's is a model prayer, but then it is a little prayer, and the burden of the petition is for little. The Sermon on the Mount is little, but the last dedication discourse was two hours. The Roman said, "_Veni, vidi, vici_"--I came, saw, conquered; but despatches now-a-days are longer than the battles they tell of. Everybody calls that little which they love best upon earth. We once heard a good sort of a man speak of his little wife, and we fancied she must be a perfect _bijou_ of a woman. We saw her; she weighed two hundred and ten; we were surprised. But then it was no joke--the man meant it. He could put his wife in his heart, and have room for other things besides; and what was she but precious, and what could she be but little? We rather doubt the stories of great argosies of gold we sometimes hear of, for Nature deals in littles altogether. Life is made up of littles, death is what remains of them all. Day is made up of little beams, and night is glorious with little stars. _Multum in parvo_--much in little--is the great beauty of all that we love best, hope for most, and remember longest.

SPEAKING HIS DEEP EMOTIONS.--155.

"My dear Ellen," said Mr. Softfellow to a young lady whose smiles he was seeking, "I have long wished for this sweet opportunity, but I hardly dare trust myself now to speak the deep emotions of my palpitating heart; but I declare to you, my dearest Ellen, that I love you most tenderly; your smiles would shed--would shed----" "Never mind the wood-shed," said Ellen, "go on with that pretty talk."

SPIRITUALISM EXTRAORDINARY.--156.

An enthusiastic spiritualist, when relating to a sceptic certain spiritual performances to which he could testify, said that on one occasion the spirit of his wife, who had been dead several years, returned to him, and, seating herself on his knee, put her arms around him and kissed him, much to his gratification, as she used to do when living. "You do not mean to say," remarked the sceptic, "that the spirit of your wife really embraced you and kissed you?" "No, not exactly that," replied the believer; "but her spirit took possession of the female medium--the future Mrs. B---- that is to be, you know--and through her embraced and kissed me."

MILWAUKEE ELOQUENCE.--157.

Western eloquence continues to improve. A Wisconsin reporter sends the following sketch. A lawyer in Milwaukee was defending a handsome young woman accused of stealing from a large unoccupied dwelling in the night-time, and thus he spake in conclusion:--"Gentlemen of the jury, I am done. When I gaze with enraptured eyes on the matchless beauty of this peerless virgin, on whose resplendent charms suspicion never dared to breathe; when I behold her radiant in this glorious bloom of lustrous loveliness, which angelic sweetness might envy but could not eclipse--before which the star on the brow of Night grows pale, and the diamonds of Brazil are dim--and then reflect upon the utter madness and folly of supposing that so much beauty would expose itself to the terrors of an empty building in the cold, damp, dead of night, when innocence like hers is hiding itself amidst the snowy pillows of repose; gentlemen of the jury, my feelings are too overpowering for expression, and I throw her into your arms for protection against this foul charge, which the outrageous malice of a disappointed scoundrel has invented, to blast the fair name of this lovely maiden, whose smile shall be the reward of the verdict which I know you will give."

HEAVY TOP-DRESSING.--158.

"It's all very pretty talk," said a recently married old bachelor, who had just finished reading an essay on the "Culture of Women," just as a heavy milliner's bill was presented to him--"it's all very pretty, this cultivation of women; but such a charge as this for bonnets is rather a heavy top-dressing--in my judgment."

HAIRS, NOT BRISTLES.--159.

"I am willing to split hairs with my opponent all day if he insists on it," said a very distinguished American lawyer the other day, in a speech at the bar. "Split _that_ then," said the opponent, pulling a coarse specimen from his own head, and extending it. "May it please the court, I didn't say _bristles_!"

ANTEDILUVIAN DIET.--160.

A friend thinks the antediluvian life must have been a great contrast to ours, and pictures it thus:--"Only fancy having two dried whales hanging in your larder, and a cold mammoth 'cut and come again' on the sideboard. 'Shall I help you to a bit of Icthoyaturns?' 'Thank you, I should prefer a slice of your Mastadon.' Stewed Plesiosauri! Leviathan _à la crapoderie_! Imagine a bill, not at twelve months, but at two hundred years; and a fellow who carried off your plate-box getting sent to the treadmill for fourscore summers! Consider an elderly gentleman, with a liver complaint of only one hundred years' standing, wearing out four sets of false teeth, and finally carried off, after a brief illness of three hundred and ten years, in a galloping consumption!"

JIMMY O'NEIL AND PRESIDENT JACKSON.--161.

When Jackson was President, Jimmy O'Neil, the porter, was a marked character. He had his foibles, which were offensive to the fastidiousness of Colonel Donelson, and caused his dismissal on an average of about once a week. But on appeal to the higher court, the verdict was invariably reversed by the good nature of the old general. Once, however, Jimmy was guilty of some flagrant offence, and was summoned before the highest tribunal at once. The general, after stating the details of the misdeed, observed, "Jimmy, I have borne with you for years, in spite of all complaints; but in this act you have gone beyond my powers of endurance." "And do you believe the story?" asked Jimmy. "Certainly," answered the general: "I have just heard it from two senators." "Faith," retorted Jimmy, "if I believe all that twenty senators say about you it's little I'd think you are fit to be President." "Pshaw! Jimmy," concluded the general; "clear out and go on duty, but be more careful hereafter." Jimmy remained with his kind-hearted patron not only to the close of his presidential term, but, accompanying him to the Hermitage, was with him to the day of his death.

THE ORIGIN OF "SOME PUNKIN."--162.

An old lady was engaged in making pumpkin pies; she had got the pumpkin all prepared, when by an untoward accident the table was overturned, and the pumpkin went on to the floor. The table in overturning overset the slop-pail, and the slops went on the floor too. The old lady being of a saving disposition, concluded to save the pumpkin and clean up also; so she takes up one handful, looks at it--"That's punkin"--puts it into the pumpkin-dish; takes up another--"That's slops"--puts it into the slop-pail. So she goes on picking up alternately pumpkin and slops, till finally she gets a handful mixed. She looks at it, and says, "That is _some punkin_, but mostly slops!" and hence the phrase.

ARTEMUS WARD ON THE NEGRO.--163.

Feller Sittersuns,--The African may be our brother. Severil hily rispectable gentlemen and some talented females tell us so, and for argyment sake i might be injooced to grant it, tho' I don't beleeve it myself. But the African isn't our sister, and wife, and unkle. He isn't severil of our brothers and fust wife's relashuns. He isn't our grandfather and grate grandfather, and our aunt in the country. Scarcely: And yet numeris persons would have us think. It's troo he runs Congress and severil others grossery's, but he ain't everybody. But we've got the African, or ruther he's got us, and how are we going to do about it? He's a orful noosance. P'raps he isn't to blame for it. P'raps he was created for some wise purpis, like the measles and New England rum, but it's mity hard to see it. At any rate here, and as I stated to Mr. What-is-it, it's a pity he coodent go off somewheres quietly by hisself, where he cood wear red weskits and speckled necties, and gratefy his ambition in varis interestin wayse, without havin a eternal fuss up about him. P'raps I'm bearing down too hard on Cuffy.

A QUAKER'S EXCUSE FOR FIRING.--164.

A good story is told of a Quaker volunteer, who was in a Virginia skirmish. Coming in pretty close quarters with a Secessionist, he remarked: "Friend, 'tis very unfortunate, but thee standest just where I am going to shoot;" and, blazing away, down came his man.

BROTHER OF FOUR MILLION CHILDREN.--165.

A Kansas woman, named Million, was lately married, and by her marriage the bride becomes sister to her father and mother and aunt to her brothers and sisters. The groom becomes son of a younger brother, his sister-in-law becomes his mother, and he becomes the brother of four "Million" children. What relation were said parties previous to their marriage?

SUSPECTING THE SHELL.--166.

When the mine dug under Fort Hill, at Vicksburg, by General Logan, exploded, June 26th, a large number of rebels were killed and wounded. Among others who were blown high above the works was an American citizen of African descent, who fell on his head on the outside of the rebel fort, and to the astonishment of our soldiers was not killed. As some of the men ran towards the darkey, of course carrying their arms, he rose to his feet, and shouted, "For de Lord's sake, sogers, don't shoot dis nigger. I wasn't doin' no fighting; I was only totin' up grub." When asked how high he had been, he replied, "Two or dree mile, I reckon;" and on being asked how he came within our lines said, "Dunno, massa; shell, I spec."

A SMART RAILWAY EMPLOYÉ.--167.

A railroad _employé_, whose home is in Avon, came on Saturday night to ask for a pass down to visit his family. "You are in employ of the railroad?" asked the gentleman applied to. "Yes." "You receive your pay regularly?" "Yes." "Well, now suppose you were working for a farmer instead of a railroad, would you expect your employer to hitch up his team every Saturday night, and carry you home?" This seemed a poser, but it wasn't. "No," said the man, promptly, "I wouldn't expect that; but if the farmer had his team hitched up, and was going my way, I should call him a darned mean cuss if he would not let me ride." Mr. _Employé_ came out three minutes afterwards with a pass good for twelve months.

THE LATE FLOYD.--168.

A gifted poet has perpetrated the following epitaph on the late Floyd:--

"Floyd has died and few have sobb'd, Since, had he lived, all had been robb'd; He's paid Dame Nature's debt, 'tis said-- The only one he ever paid. Some doubt that he resign'd his breath; But vow that he has cheated even death. If he is buried, oh! then, ye dead beware; Look to your swaddlings, of your shrouds take care. Lest Floyd should to your coffins make his way, And steal the linen from your mould'ring clay."

A VEGETABLE HEAD.--169.

The late Judge Peters has left behind him a host of well-remembered puns worth relating. When on the District Court Bench, he observed to Judge Washington that one of the witnesses had a _vegetable_ head. "How so?" was the inquiry. "He has _carroty_ hair, _reddish_ cheeks, a _turn-up_ nose, and a _sage_ look."

OBJECTING TO MISSIONS.--170.

A wag was lately asked to contribute to foreign missions. "Not on any account," said he. "Why not?" asked the collector, "the object is laudable." "No, it isn't," was the reply; "not half so many people go to the devil now as ought to."

HIS FIRST STEP.--171.

We extract the following from a popular story. It narrates the early experience of a bashful boy:--"Well, my sister Lib gave a party one night, and I stayed away from home because I was too bashful to face the music. I hung around the house, whistling 'Old Dan Tucker,' dancing to keep my feet warm, watching heads bobbing up and down behind the window-curtains, and wishing the thundering party would break up so I could get to my room. I smoked up a bunch of cigars, and as it was getting late and mighty uncomfortable, I concluded to climb up the door-post. No sooner said than done, and I found myself snug in bed. 'Now,' says I, 'let her rip! Dance till your wind is out!' And, cuddled under the quilts, Morpheus grabbed me. I was dreaming of soft-shelled crabs and stewed tripe, and having a good time, when somebody knocked at my room-door and woke me up. 'Rap,' again. I laid low. 'Rap, rap, rap!' Then I heard a whispering, and I knew there was a whole raft of girls outside. 'Rap, rap!' Then Lib sings out, 'Jack, are you in there?' 'Yes,' says I; and then came a roar of laughter. 'Let us in,' says she. 'I won't,' says I. Then came another laugh. By thunder, I began to get riled! 'Get out, you petticoated scarecrows!' I cried; 'can't you get a beau without hauling a fellow out of bed? I won't go home with you--I won't--so you may clear out!' And sending a boot at the door, I felt better. But presently--O mortal buttons!--I heard a still small voice, very like sister Lib's, and it said, 'Jack, you'll have to get up, for all the girls' things are in there!' Oh dear, what a pickle! Think of me in bed, all covered with shawls, muffs, bonnets, and cloaks, and twenty girls outside waiting to get in. As it was, I rolled out among the ribbons in a hurry. Smash went the millinery in every direction. I had to dress in the dark, and the way I fumbled about was death on straw hats. The critical moment at last came. I opened the door, and found myself right among the women! 'Oh, my Leghorn!' cries one. 'My dear winter velvet!' cries another. And they pinched in--they piled me this way and that--boxed my ears; and one little bright-eyed piece--Sal ----, her name was--put her arms right round my neck and kissed me right on my lips! Human nature couldn't stand that, and I gave her as good as she sent. It was the first time I had ever got a taste, and it was powerful good. I believe I could have kissed that gal from Julius Cæsar to the Fourth of July. 'Jack,' said she, 'we are sorry to disturb you, but won't you see me home?' 'Yes,' says I, 'I will.' I did do it, and had another smack at the gate, too. After that we took a kinder turtle-doving after each other, both of us sighing like a barrel of new cider when we were away from each other."

HIS WIFE'S COUSIN.--172.

A country gentleman lately arrived at Boston, and immediately repaired to the house of a relative, a lady who had married a merchant. The parties were glad to see him, and invited him to make their house his home, as he declared his intention of remaining in the city only a day or two. The husband of the lady, anxious to show his attention to a relative and friend of his wife, took the gentleman's horse to a livery stable in Hanover Street. Finally his visit became a visitation, and the merchant found, after the lapse of eleven days, besides lodging and boarding the gentleman, a pretty considerable bill had run up at the livery stable. Accordingly he went to the man who kept the livery stable, and told him when the gentleman took his horse he would pay the bill. "Very well," said the stable-keeper, "I understand you." Accordingly, in a short time the country gentleman went to the stable and ordered his horse to be got ready. The bill, of course, was presented to him. "Oh," said the gentleman, "Mr. ----, my relative, will pay this." "Very good," said the stable-keeper, "please get an order from Mr. ----; it will be the same as money." The horse was put up again, and down went the country gentleman to Long Wharf, which the merchant kept. "Well," said he, "I am going now." "Are you?" said the gentleman. "Well, good-bye, sir." "Well, about my horse; the man said the bill must be paid for his keeping." "Well, I suppose that is all right, sir." "Yes--well, but you know I'm your wife's cousin." "Yes," said the merchant, "I know you are, but your horse is not."

YANKEE TOASTS.--173.

The following toasts were given at a recent dinner of New Jersey Democrats:--"Blessed are the peacemakers." "The last man and the last dollar--May the one be an Abolitionist, and the other a shin-plaster, and may they both perish in the last ditch together." "State rights--May they not be forgotten in delirious and bloody triumph of State wrongs." "Things we remember--Habeas corpus and trial by jury." "To the first Governor who shall have the virtue and courage to keep his oath of office, and defend the constitution, laws, and sovereignty of his State, and the rights of its citizens." "The light of other days, when Liberty wore a white face, and America was not a negro." "The Democratic party, as it was, before cowardice, treachery, shoddy, and greenbacks had demoralized its councils." "The abolition war for disunion--Let those who think it is right go to it, and those who think it is wrong stay at home." "May those who say we shall never have the Union as it was follow the example of their brother traitor, Judas Iscariot, who died and went to his own place." "The war Democrat--A white man's face on the body of a negro." "The only possible remedy for secession and the only hope of the Union--Peace, mutual concession, and compromise."

A BIG PUFF.--174.

A model certificate is the following:--"Dear doctor,--I will be one hundred and seventy-five years old next October. For over eighty-four years I have been an invalid, unable to step except when moved by a lever. But a year ago I heard of the Granicular Syrup. I bought a bottle, smelt the cork, and found myself a man. I can now run twelve miles and a half an hour, and throw nineteen summersaults without stopping."

VERY ODD THAT.--175.

A conversation took place during dinner at head-quarters at ----. A number of officers being present, the conversation turned upon the condition and efficiency of their different regiments. Colonel ----, of the New York ----, stated that nine different nations were represented in his regiment; and, after going over Irish, German, French, English, &c., several times, could enumerate but eight. He said he was certain there were nine, but what the ninth was he could not remember. Lieutenant ----, who was present, suggested "Americans." "By Jove!" says the colonel, "that's it--Americans."

HOW ALE STRENGTHENED HIM.--176.

A student of an American State College had a barrel of ale deposited in his room--contrary, of course, to the rule and usage. He received a summons to appear before the president, who said: "Sir, I am informed that you have a barrel of ale in your room." "Yes, sir." "Well, what explanation can you make?" "Why, the fact is, sir, my physician advises me to try a little each day as a tonic; and, not wishing to stop at the various places where the beverage is retailed, I concluded to have a barrel taken to my room." "Indeed! and have you derived any benefit from the use of it?" "Ah! yes, sir. When the barrel was first taken to my room I could scarcely lift it; now I can carry it with the greatest ease."

LUMINOUS EVIDENCE.--177.

"Johnson, you say Snow was de man dat robbed you?" "Yes." "Was it moonlight when it took place?" "No, siree." "Was it starlight?" "I, golly! no; it was so dark you couldn't see your hand afore your face." "Well, was there any light shining from any house near by?" "Why, no; there wasn't a house within a mile of us." "Well, then, if there was no moon, no starlight, no light from any house, and so dark you couldn't even see your hand before your face, how are you so positive that Mr. Snow was the man, and how did you see him?" "Why, Cuff, you see, when the nigger struck me, de fire flew out ob my eyes so bright, that you might see to pick up a pin."

SCIPIO'S WIFE.--178.

Who was Scipio's wife? Missis-sippi-o, of course.

THE DYING SOLDIER AND HIS MOTHER.--179.