running about twenty miles per hour-a sudden gust of wind took off his hat. Quick as thought, with outstretched hand, the little fellow jumped for it. With a cry of horror the nearest spectator jerked the signal-rope, and with the Conductor's aid succeeded in bringing the train up in about a third of a mile from the scene of the occurrence. The engine was immediately reversed and the train slowly backed, while a number of us sprang off upon either side, and ran back with all speed, expecting every moment to reach the mangled remains of the rash boy; when, lo! as we gained the end of the cut, we saw him trotting leisurely along upon the track, holding his recovered hat in one hand, while he dusted his clothes with the other! The first one who overhauled him exclaimed:

"Mercy, child! what did you jump off for!" Not a tear trembled in the little Spartan's eye as he answered:

"Well, I guess I went for my hat!"

He was not even bruised. Wouldn't some of your constant travelers give something for that boy's apparent immunity from danger of life and limb, especially in these days of railroad "accidents?"

THERE is a decidedly queer genius living in this county-we will not say exactly where-who occasionally gets off some good things. He once had a horse to sell, which he found to be something of a job, as the animal was old, blind of an eye, and notorious far and wide as a "breachy critter."

N-, however, endeavored to impress upon the mind of a possible purchaser the fact that "Baldface" was a horse of the right stamp, and withal quite youthful-only eight years old (he was twelve, if a day). The man who was looking at him happened to know where N had got him, and said: told me he had raised known him for the last

"Why, N―, Mr. Rthat horse, and said he had twelve years."

rather more thoroughly imbued with "secession" principles than the majority of his race, importuned his master to allow him the use of a carbine for the purpose of "habin a pop at de gun-boats." Permission being accorded, he valorously crawled to the river-bank and ensconced himself behind a huge stump. Not a shot had been fired on either side. Suddenly the boat in the lead opened with a huge Columbiad, whose concussion was so great that every thing fairly shivered. The ball plowed up the bank in close quarters to Sambo, throwing a liberal quantity of mother earth upon him. He was at once "demoralized," having never heard such a report before; and, with the wildest terror depicted in his countenance, immediately broke for the foot of the hill. Arriving there, he shouted, with eyes agog and ashen cheeks: "Good grashy, massa, she's busted!"

WE once owned a small, beautiful black-and-tan terrier, and while residing, a year or two since, for a few months at a favorite summer resort, a most magnificent Newfoundland dog, the property of an ex-Governor and prominent politician, residing a mile or two distant, was in the habit of visiting our house almost daily. One day our little dog was missing. Being a special favorite, her loss was seriously felt. Advertisements were published in the newspapers, and hand-bills circulated, offering a liberal reward for her return. Whether or not Mr. Newfoundland saw and read them we are not prepared to say; but one forenoon he came trotting up the street carefully holding Mistress "Yet" by the nape of her neck, as a fond mother-cat does her kittens. Reaching the servants' door of the house, and waiting till it was opened, he walked in and deposited his charge in the kitchen-gravely nodded his head, wagged his tail, and quietly left, not even intimating a claim for the reward.

and

66

Why, N, if you get that stack up this afternoon, you will be done before any of us."

The old man replied: "Wa'al, I callate to; and me and my boy 'll put this ere stack up this arternoon, ef it takes us till mornin'!"

He finished that "arternoon."

REV. MR. A—, in Felin's Grove, Pennsylvania, had just commenced his sermon one Sunday morning when a boy, some eight or nine years of age, got up, and walking straight up to the minister, asked, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the congregation: "May I go home? I forgot to feed the pigs!" Consent was given, but the effect upon the minister as well as upon the congregation was far from serious.

WHEN the rebel General Wheeler's cavalry made their valorous attack upon Uncle Sam's gun-boats, while cruising on the Tennessee, a negro, who was

learned of his whereabouts, and with a requisition from the Governor, a Sheriff had been sent for his arrest; and reaching the hotel where both were stopping, was informed that Mr. B- was in his room with a friend; entering which, and being a stranger to both, he inquired if Mr. B was in? "Yes," said Mr. S—. "I have a little private matter with you," says the Sheriff," and would see you alone." "Certainly, please walk into the next room." With that suspicion always attached to guilt, Mr. B—was not slow in deciding who the stranger might be, as also his business, and slowly left the room, but rapidly the hotel.

Reading the warrant of arrest, supposing it was to Mr. B, Mr. S asked him his purpose. "To take you to Boston." "How soon?" "Immediately; the cars leave in a few minutes." "Certainly; I am ready now." The Sheriff purchasing tickets for the two, off they started. Arriving at Boston, Mr. S thanked the Sheriff for his politeness and liberality, in not only accompanying him home, but also for paying his fare; and then informed him that his name was S, and that the Mr. B, with whom he was conversing when called on at the hotel, and named in the warrant,

was by this time well on his way to, if not already clear over, the Canada line; and politely bid him good-day.

A SHORT time since it was the ill fate of the writer to be detained for a day in the village of Windfall, in a most miserable, muddy part of Indiana. While taking a lunch of crackers, cheese, "lager," etc., at the only "grocery"-a combination of saloon, restaurant, and general lounging place for the "natives," dressed in coon-skin caps, country-spun blue jeans, and other motley rig-a sign painted on an unplaned board, over the door leading to a back apartment where "poker" and seven up" were going on high, attracted our attention. Here it is, verbatim et "spellatim:"

NOSWARI NGINTHI

SHOUSE

Our lunch had been consumed long before the meaning had been extracted from the strange notice, but we finally found it to be, "No swaring in this house."

We think the swearing could hardly have been beaten by "our army in Flanders;" but it was, doubtless, only because nobody among the customers was able to read the forbidding "notis."

SAYS a dweller in the Green Mountain State: I have been for many years a constant reader of Harper's Magazine, and enjoy the Drawer; but I have looked almost in vain to find somewhat of little seven-by-nine Vermont. Are you not cognizant of us as a State of the Union-not having seceded, or "left out in the cold?" Have you not heard that she raises the bravest of men, the most knowing women, the best blood-horses, the largest cabbages, and the most toothsome pumpkins in all creation? Why, Sir, she produced an original, if not the original Mrs. Partington. She was a round, corpulent old lady, not very "fair" nor very "forty," only "a little more so," and she lived in this little would-becity of Rutland a good many years since. A goodnatured body, always most generously disposed to give you all the information desirable on all and every subject; in other words, a most intolerable gossip, and as usual with such as intolerably ignorant, marring and murdering the Queen's English beyond all endurance, a specimen of which I here send you.

We used to call her Aunt Patty:

A good many years ago, when Cincinnati was farther West than it is now, a clergyman by the name of Jones went there on a mission of some kind, when the place was considered almost out of the world. After he had been absent some little time, a gentleman came to inquire of Aunt Patty where Mr. Jones had gone? "Oh," says she, "he's gone to the Sins-of-Natur, ridin' on a Misswary!"

A BLUE NOSE writes from Halifax, and thus: DEAR DRAWER,-On the far-off plains of Minnesota, by Niagara's noisy stream, while wearing Federal blue and doing duty for Uncle Samuel out here among the "Blue Noses," whether in city or in country, month after month, and year after year, I have longed for your coming, and derived much pleasure from your genial ways. Here is a little anecdote for your columns:

In Providence, Rhode Island, there used to dwell a curious genius by the name of, say W. Old W kept a store, and was much more famed for sharp than honest dealing. One day an old farmer

left in his store-to be filled with molasses—an eightgallon keg, called in those days a "runlet,” while be himself went about the town on other business. Upon his return he found his bill made out for ten gallons. "I didn't care," said the old farmer afterward, "about the two gallons extra, but I hated to have my runlet strained so bad!"

THE same old W used to say that he always bought two barrels of rum at a time, and kept them both on draught; and though of the same quality and manufacture, he charged twenty-five cents per gallon for one barrel, and fifty-eight cents per gallon for the other; yet, strange to say, the fifty-eight cent rum was always "out" first!

SOME years ago you published an anecdote of one of our Nebraska legislators who moved that the vote on the question then pending be taken "vice versa.” There is an addendum that you ought to have:

Last summer a couple of Nebraska gentlemen were traveling on the Missouri River, and while sitting on the guards of the boat, talking over the Nebraskians who had been immortalized in the Drawer, the ex-legislator came along and mixed into the conversation. One of the gentlemen remarked:

By-the-way, Mr. Legislator, were not you immortalized in the Drawer once?"

"Yes, they told a yarn on me, but it was a big lie. I know the Latin well enough; and Judge Armstrong just thought he'd twist it, and get up a joke at my expense."

"Well, if the yarn wasn't true, please tell us what you did say-give us the right of it; because a good many people believe the one published."

"Why, I moved to vote viva versa. I understand the Latin well enough!-likely I'd say vice versa !” So he got no nearer vira voce than on the first trial.

MR. BUDKINS is a spry old gentleman of sixty, but having never married he passes for forty-five, and would like to take off ten of that. During the cold weather, when the Central Park pond was in fine order for skating, old gent got a splendid pair of shiners, and undertook to display his youthful agility in the midst of his young friends and the public generally. It was hard work to get them on, harder to get up when they were on; but he was ready at last, and boldly striking out, one leg went north, the other south, and down he came as solid and square as a judge on the bench. Blaming the skates, he strapped them up, rose to his feet, and with a new flourish came up, all standing, on the same cushion that received him before. Trying again he met the same fate; when a "Young America" coming up, and beholding him sitting at his ease on the glassy surface, called out to him: "I say, old cockadoodle, you've got them skates on the wrong place; put 'em on under your coat-tails!" Budkins grinned a ghastly smile, and then called to the boy, who glided off in an instant, and would not come back to get a quarter. Budkins took off his skates, and went home a wiser and a sadder man.

COLERIDGE was acknowledged to be a bad rider. One day, riding through a street, he was accosted by a would-be wit: "I say, do you know what happened to Balaam?" Came the answer sharp and quick: "The same as happened to me. An ass spoke to him!"

THE TAILOR BIRD.

needed for the task which it performs. Having found its thread, the feathered tailor begins to pass it through the holes, drawing the sides of the leaf toward each other, so as to form a kind of hollow cone, the point downward. Generally a single leaf is used for this purpose, but whenever the bird can not find one that is sufficiently large, it sews two together, or even fetches another leaf and fastens it with the fibre. Within the hollow thus formed the bird next deposits a quantity of soft white down, like short cotton wool, and thus constructs a warm, light, and elegant nest, which is scarcely visible among the leafage of the tree, and which is safe from almost every foe except man.

There is another pretty bird, the Fan-Tailed Warbler, which sews leaves together to form a nest, although that nest can not be ranked among the pensiles. This bird builds among reeds, sewing together a number of their flat blades, in order to make a hollow wherein its nest may be hidden. Instead, however, of passing its thread con

The individual who first invented sewing, doubtless thought he had discovered, or rather created, an entirely new art; although, indeed, the respectable fraternity of tailors were wont to attribute to their mystery an antiquity surpassing that of any other handicraft, and, on the strength of a certain passage in Genesis, claimed Adam as the first tailor. Had they been moderately skilled in ornithology, they might have claimed a still older origin, on the grounds that, long before man came on the earth, the needle and the thread were used for sewing two objects together.

The wonderful little bird, whose portrait is accurately given in the accompanying illustration, is popularly known by the appropriate title of Tailor Bird, and is a native of India. The manner in which it constructs its pensile nest is very singular. Choosing a convenient leaf, generally one which hangs from the end of a slender twig, it pierces a row of holes along cach edge, using its beak in the same manner that a shoemaker uses his awl, the two instruments being very similar to each other in shape, though not in material. These holes are not at all regular, and in some cases there are so many of them, that the bird seems to have found some special gratification in making them, just as a boy who has a new knife makes havoc on every piece of wood which he can obtain.

When the holes are completed, the bird next procures its thread, which is a long fibre of some plant, generally much longer than is

ber of threads, and makes a knot at the end of each, in order to prevent it from being pulled through the hole.

Some very remarkable examples of pensile birds' nests are found in Australia. In the more dense and humid parts of the Australian forests there is a rapid and abundant growth of moss upon the trunks of decayed trees, and even it often accumulates in large masses at the extremities of the drooping branches. These masses often become of sufficient size to admit of the Yellow-throated Sericornis constructing a nest in the centre of them, which it does with so much art that it is impossible to distinguish it from any of the other pendulous masses in the vicinity. These bunches are frequently a yard in length; and although the nest is constantly disturbed by the wind, and liable to be shaken when the tree is disturbed, so secure does the inmate consider itself from danger or intrusion of any kind, that the female is frequently captured while sitting on her eggs-a feat that may always be accomplished by carefully placing the hand over the entrance-that is, if it can be detected, to effect which no slight degree of close prying and examination is necessary.

The nest is formed of the inner bark of trees, intermingled with green moss, which soon vegetates; sometimes dried grasses and fibrous roots form part of the materials of which it is composed, and it is warmly lined with feathers.

The Rock Warbler or Cataract Bird, so called because it is always found where water-courses rush through rocky ground, claims special admiration in consequence of the extraordinary