toad's mouth, and fall in when the toad gaps. Thousands find a watery grave, bi gitting drowned in milk-cans. Flys morally considered are like other human beings; they wont light on a good helthy spot in a man, not if they can find a place that iz a little raw. I beleave they are ov temprate habits, and altho they hang around grocerys a good deal, i never see a fly the wuss for liquor, but i hav often seen liquor that waz a good deal the wuss for flys.

THE READDY ROOSTER.

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having no suitable shoulder tew strike from, they strike from the heel. When a rooster gits whipped the hens all march off with the other rooster, if he aint haff so big, or so hansum. It is pluck that wins a hen. Roosters az a class wont do enny household work; yu kant git a rooster tew pay enny attenshun tew a yungone. They spend most ov their time in crowing and strutting; and once in a while they find a worm, which they make a grate fuss over, calling their wives up from a distance, apparently tew treat them, but jist az the hens git thare this elegant cuss bends over and

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"WILL you keep an eye on my horse, my son, while I step in and get a drink? Yes, sir." Stranger goes in, gets his drink, comes out, and finds his horse missing. "Where is my horse, boy?" "He's runn'd away, sir." "Didn't I tell you to take care of him, you young scamp? No, sir; you told me to keep my eye on him, and I did, till he got clear out of sight."

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Ar a cattle show recently, a fellow who was making himself ridiculously conspicuous at last broke forth :-" Call these here prize cattle! Why, they ain't nothin' to what our folks raised. My father raised the biggest calf of any man round our parts." "Don't doubt it," remarked a bystander-" and the noisiest."

A GENTLEMAN being at church, had his pocket picked of a watch; and, complaining of it to a friend of his, he replied, "Had you watched as well as prayed, your watch had been secure. But the next watch you carry about you, remember these lines: "He who a watch would keep two things must do, Pocket his watch and watch his pocket too."

A TALL Western girl, named Short, long loved a certain big Mr. Little, while Little, little thinking of Short, loved a little lass named Long. To make a long story short, Little proposed to Long; and Short longed to be even with Little's shortcomings. So Short, meeting Long, threatened to marry Little before long, which caused Little, in a short time, to marry Long. Query-Did tall Short love big Little less because Little loved Long?"

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Certainly, certainly; have it your own way, pray. You see how much I contradict you," rejoins the lady.

"Of course, you didn't contradict me at dinnertime-oh no, not you!" says the gentleman.

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Yes, I did," says the lady.

"Oh, you did!" cries the gentleman; admit that ? "

66 you

"If you call that contradiction, I do," the lady answers; "and I say again, Edward, that when I know you are wrong, I will contradict you. I am not your slave."

"Not my slave!" repeats the gentleman, bitterly: "and you still mean to say that in the Blackburns' new house there are not more than fourteen doors, including the door of the winecellar!"

"I mean to say," retorts the lady, beating time with her hair-brush on the palm of her hand, "that in that house there are fourteen doors, and no more."

"Well, then," cries the gentleman, rising in despair, and pacing the room with rapid strides, "this is enough to destroy a man's intellect, and drive him mad!"

COUPLE.

By-and-by the gentleman comes-to a little, and, passing his hand gloomily across his forehead, reseats himself in his former chair. There is a long silence, and this time the lady begins.

"I appealed to Mr. Jenkins, who sat next to me on the sofa in the drawing-room, during tea." "Morgan, you surely mean," interrupts the gen tleman.

"I do not mean anything of the kind," answers the lady.

"Now, by all that is aggravating and impossible to bear," cries the gentleman, clenching his hands and looking upwards in agony, "she is going to insist upon it that Morgan is Jenkins."

"Do you take me for a perfect fool?" exclaims the lady, 66 do you suppose I don't know the one from the other? Do you suppose I don't know that the man in the blue coat was Mr. Jenkins?" "Jenkins in a blue coat!" cries the gentleman, with a groan; Jenkins in a blue coat!-a man who would suffer death rather than wear anything but brown!"

"Do you dare to charge me with telling an untruth?" demands the lady, bursting into tears. "I charge you, ma'am," retorts the gentleman, starting up, "with being a monster of contradiction, a monster of aggravation, a-a-a-Jenkins in a blue coat!-what have I done, that I should be doomed to hear such statements ?"

NEVER knew her to be the first down in the morning, and not the last up at night.

Keep an account-book in the place of an album.

Consent to sit down to the piano on anything under the dozenth time of asking.

Pay a morning call in her last year's bonnet.

Do plain needlework instead of fancy collar stitching.

Return from the morning service without bringing Lome an inventory (exact to a ribbon) of all the new toilettes which have been displayed there.

Practise "Cramer's Exercise" in the place of a polka.

Wear shoes of any other than most wafer-like construction, especially when the snow is on the ground.

Condescend to learn an English song instead of an Italian one.

Leave out of conversation: "La!" "You don't

say so!" "Dear me !" and "Well, I never!"

Mend her own "things," and also her younger brother's.

Travel twenty miles without nineteen packages, seventeen of which she might easily dispense with.

Be seen to eat more at dinner than a couple of canaries could.

And, finally, take less than forty minutes to "run and put her bonnet on!"

He is quite a gentleman. A smile permanently settles on his clean face. He wipes his boots on a mat before he walks up-stairs. He pays high rent and has but few friends. He leaves his drawers open. He has a cellar of coal at a time. He takes a newspaper, and is not in a hurry for it in the morning. He is never out later than ten. He shaves with cold water. He never adds up a bill. He is fond of children. He likes to buy them sweatmeats, and to take one occasionally to the theatre. He never dines at home, except on Sundays, and that rarely. The landlady orders his dinner; it is generally a very large joint, with

BOARDER.

plenty of vegetables, a very large pie, and a very large slice of cheese. He never inquires for the joint, or the pie, or anything the next day. He lends his books cheerfully. He is in doubt about the exact number of his shirts. He rarely rings the bell. He pays for extras without a murmur. Rather likes music. Does not object to a piano and a flute playing different tunes at the same time. He is never in arrears with his board; if it is not paid the very day it becomes due, the reason is because he has paid it the day before. The Model Boarder is sheepish, rich, and contented.

"I WAS with Grant- -" the stranger said;
Said the farmer, "Say no more,
But rest thee here at my cottage porch,
For thy feet are weary and sore."

"I was with Grant- -" the stranger said;
Said the farmer, "Nay, no more-
I prithee sit at my frugal board,
And eat of my humble store.

"How fares my boy-my soldier-boy
Of the old Ninth Army Corps?
I warrant he bore him gallantly
In the smoke and the battle's roar."

T

I

am not upon Lord Cowley's visiting list, nor are any coroneted cards ever left at my door on the sixth storey. I did not receive a card from the British Embassy on the occasion of the last ball at the Hôtel de Ville; and I am ashamed to confess that, so anxious was I to partake of the hospitality of the Prefect of the Seine (the toilettes and the iced punch are perfect at his balls) that I was mean enough to forswear temporarily my nationality, and to avail myself of the card of Colonel Waterton Privilege, of Harshellopolis, Ga.; said colonel being at that time, and in all probability exceedingly sick, in his state-room of the United States steamer Forked Lightning, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. But by His Lordship's I mean an Anglo-French restaurantnamed after a defunct English City eating-house -situate near the Place de la Concorde, and where I heard that real English roast beef was to be ohtained at all hours, in first-rate condition.

*

His Lordship's mansion I found unpretending, even to obscurity. There was no porte-cochère, no courtyard, no gilt railings, nor green verandahs. His Lordship's hotel was, in fact, only a little slice of a shop, with one dining-room over it; for which, I was told, he paid an enormous rent-some thousands of francs a year. In his window were displayed certain English viands pleasant to the sight a mighty beef-steak pie just cut; the kidney end of a loin of veal, with real English stuffing, palpable to sight; some sausages that might have been pork, and of Epping; some potatoes, in their homely brown jackets, just out at elbows, as your well-done potatoes should be, with their flannel under-garments peeping through; and a spherical mass, something of the size and shape of a bombshell, dark in colour, speckled black and white, and which my beating heart told me was a plum-pudding. A prodigious Cheshire cheese, rugged as Helvellyn, craggy as Criffell, filled up the background like a range of yellow mountains. At the base there were dark forests of bottles branded with the names of Allsopp, and Bass, and Guinness, and there were cheering announcements framed and glazed, respecting Pale Ale on draught, L.L. Whiskey, and Genuine Old Tom. I rubbed my hands in glee. "Ha! ha!" I said, internally; "nothing like our British aristocracy, after all. The true stock, sir. May His Lordship's shadow never diminish!"

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Now appeared a gaunt, ossified waiter, with blueblack hair, jaws so closely shaven that they gave him an unpleasant resemblance to the grand inquisitor of the Holy Office in disguise, seeking for heretics in a cook-shop, and who was, besides, in a perpetual cold perspiration of anger against an irate man in a shooting-jacket below, and carried on fierce verbal warfare with him down the stairThis waiter rose up against me, rather than addressed me, and charged me with a pike of bread, cutting the usual immense slice from it. I mildly suggested roast beef, wincing, it must be owned, under the eye of the cadaverous waiter; who looked as if he were accustomed to duplicity, and did not believe a word that I was saying.

case.

Ah! rosbif!" he echoed; "bien saignant, n'estce pas ?"

Now, so far from liking my meat bien saignant, I cannot even abide the sight of it rare, and I told him so. But he repeated "bien saignant," and

vanished.

He came again, though; or, rather, his pallid face protruded itself over the top of the box where I sat (there were boxes at His Lordship's), and asked"Paint portare ? p'lale? ole' ale ?" P

I was nettled, and told him sharply that I would try the wine, if he could recommend it. Whereupon there was silence, and then I heard a voice, crying down a pipe, " Paint portare!"

He brought me my dinner, and I didn't like it. It was bien saignant, but it wasn't beef, and it swam in a dead sea of gravy that was not to my taste; fat from strange animals seemed to have been grafted on to the lean. I did not get on better with the potatoes, which were full of promise, like a park hack, and unsatisfactory in the performance. I tried some plum-pudding afterwards; but, if the proof of the pudding be in the eating, that pudding remains unproved to this day; for when I tried to fix my fork in it, it rebounded away across the room, and hit a black man on the leg. I would rather not say anything about the porter, if you please; and perhaps it is well to be brief on the subject of the glass of hot hollands-and-water which I tried afterwards, in a despairing attempt to be convivial; for it smelt of the midnight lamp like an erudite book, and of the midnight oil-can, and had the flavour of the commercial turpentine rather than of the odoriferous juniper. I consoled myself with some Cheshire cheese, and asked the waiter if he had the Presse.

"Ze Time is 'gage," he answered,

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"I did not want the Times. I wanted the Presse." "Sare," he repeated wrathfully, ze Time is 'gage. Le journal anglais (he accentuated this spitefully) is 'gage."

He would have no further commerce with me after this; and, doubtlessly, thinking that an Englishman who couldn't eat his beef under-done, or indeed at all, and preferred the Presse to the Times newspaper, was an outcast and a renegade, abandoned me to my evil devices, and contented