41 happened to be a man of very pale complexion, and breathed almost imperceptibly. The old woman having taken a hurried glance, proceeded to get the washbowl and towel, and filling the former with water, she placed it on a chair, near the bedside. Dipping the towel in the bowl, she said, "I guess de gemman won't want shabin' by de look ob him smooth chin," and swashing the wet towel over his face, she proceeded to wash him. "What the thunder are you about?" exclaimed the supposed corpse, rising up in bed. "Who the are you, and what are you doing here?" The Quadroon screamed in her fright, overturning the chair and washbowl. "Why, I come here to lay you out, massa," said the woman, recovering from her fright, "bress de Lord, you have come to life." Lay me out!" exclaimed the astonished No. 41. "If you don't leave here, you old hag, I will lay you out, to a certainty." And seizing a boot, he made evident demonstrations of putting this threat into execution, whilst the old woman rushed down stairs, and running against a couple of waiters, tumbled them over very unceremoniously. 66 What the- is the row?" asked the clerk, who had been anxiously expecting the denouement. The old woman explained the ridiculous mistake she had made, saying, "It must be No. 41 in de oder hotel," and left, while the clerk nearly split his sides, laughing at the joke. THE SKUNK, OR BIDDY MALONEY'S CAT. Matthew Maloney, better known by the boys of the mill as "Father Mat," on returning from work one evening, was met at the gate by Biddy, his better half, in a high state of excitement. "Mat," says she, "there's a strange cat in the cabin." 66 Cast her out thin, an' don't be botherin' me about the baste." "Faix, an' I've been sthrivin' to do that same for the matter of ten minits past, but she's jist beyant me rache, behint the big rid chest in the corner. Will yez be afther helpin' me to dhrive her out, Mat?" "To be sure I will, bad luck to the consate she has for me house; show her to me, Biddy, till I tache her the rispict that's due a man in his own house-to be takin' possission widout as much as by yer lave, the thafe o' the world!" Now Mat had a special antipathy for cats, and never let pass an opportunity to kill one. This he resolved to do in the present case, and instantly formed a plan for the purpose. Perceiving but one mode of egress for the animal, he says to Biddy "Have yez iver a male bag in the house, me darlint?" "Divil a wan is there, Mat. Yez tuk it to the mill wid yez to bring home chips wid, this mornin'." 66 Faix, an' I did, and there it is yit, thin. Well, have yez nothing at all in the house that will tie up like a bag, Biddy?" Troth, an' I have, Mat, there's me Sunday pitticoat-ye can dhraw the strings close at the top, an' sure it will do betther nor lettin' the cat be lavin' yez." "Biddy, darlint, yez a jewel to be thinkin' o' that same; be afther bringin' it to me." Biddy brought the garment, and when the strings were drawn close it made a very good substitute for a meal bag, and Mat declared it was "illegant.' So holding it close against the edge of the chest, he took a look behind and saw a pair of bright eyes glaring at him. "An' is it there ye are, ye devil? Be out o' that now; bad luck to all yer kin, ye thaving vagabone ye. Bedad, an' ye won't lave me house thin at all wid perlite axin'? Yer self-will bates a pig's intirely. Biddy, have yez any hot wather in the house?" 66 Yis. I've a plinty, Mat; the tay-kettle's full uv it." "Be afther castin' the matther of a quart thin behint the chist, till I say how the shay divil likes it." "Hould 'im close, Mat; here goes the wather." Dash went the water, and out jumped the animal into Mat's trap. "Arrah, be the howly poker, I have 'im in, Biddy," says Mat, drawing close the folds of the garment; "now, bad cess to yez, ye thafe, it's nine lives ye have, is it? Be afther axin' me forgiveness, for the thavin' ye have been doin' in me house, for I'm thinkin' the nine lives ye have won't save ye now, any way. Biddy, Mat and Biddy went cautiously back saize hoult of the poker, an' whin I'll to the cabin, from which the offensive shoulder the haythen ye'll bate the day-quadruped had taken his departure. lights out of 'im." Mat threw the bundle over his shoulder, and told Biddy to play "St. Patrick's day in the morning" on it. Biddy struck about three notes of that popular Irish air, and suddenly stopped, exclaiming What smills so quare, Mat? It's takin' me brith away wid the power uv it. Och, murther Mat; sure an' ye have the divil in the sack." "Bate the ould haythen then; yez 'ill Iniver have a betther chance. Bate the horns off 'im; lather 'im like blazes, me darlint!" "Augh!" says Biddy, "I'm faintin' wid the power uv 'im. Cast 'im off yez, Mat!" "Howly St. Pather!" says Mat, throwing down the sack; " Biddy, the baste is a skunk! Lave the house or yez 'ill be kilt intirely. Murther and turf, how the haythen smills. Och, Biddy Maloney, a purty kittle o' fish yez made of it, to be sure, to be mistakin' that little divil for a harrumless cat!" "Mat, for the love o' God, if yez convanient to the door, be afther openin' it, for I'm narely choked wid 'im. Och, Biddy Maloney, bad luck to yez for leavin' ould Ireland, to be murthered in this way. Howly Mary, pertict me! Mat, I'm clane kilt intirely-take me out o' this!" Mat drew her out-doors, and then broke for the pump like a quarter-horse, closely followed by Biddy. "Shure, that little villain bates the divil intirely; he's ruined me house, an' kilt Biddy, an' put me out o' consate wid mesilf for a month to come. Och, the desaivin' vagabone, bad luck to him," and Mat plunged his head into the horsetrough up to his shoulders. "Get out 'o that, Mat, I'm narely blind," and Biddy went under water. "Och, the murtherin' baste," says Biddy, sputtering the water out of her mouth, me best petticoat is spoilt intirely. Mat Maloney, divil a trap will I iver help yez to sit for a cat again." "Don't throuble yersilf, Mistress Maloney, ye've played the divil as it is. Niver fear me axin' a hap'orth o' yer assistance. It's a nath'ral fool ye are, to be takin' a baste uv a skunk for a house cat." Things were turned out of doors, Biddy's petticoat buried, the bed, which fortunately escaped, moved to a near neighbor's, the stove moved outside, and for a week they kept house out of doors, by which time, by dint of scrubbing, washing, and airing, the house was rendered once more habitable, but neither Mat nor Biddy has forgotten the "strange cat." GARRICK AND THE MASTIFF. One very sultry evening in the dogdays, Garrick performed the part of Lear. In the first four acts he received the accustomed tribute of applause; at the conclusion of the fifth, when we wept over the body of Cordelia, every eye caught the soft infection. At this interesting moment, to the astonishment of all present, his face assumed a new character, and his whole frame appeared agitated by a new passion; it was not tragic; it was evidently an endeavour to suppress a laugh. In a few seconds the attendant nobles appeared to be affected in the same manner, and the beauteous Cordelia, who was lying extended on a crimson couch, opening her eyes to see what occasioned the interruption, leaped from her sofa, and with the majesty of England, the gallant Albany, and the tough old Kent, ran laughing on the stage. The audience could not account for this strange termination of a tragedy in any other way than by supposing that the dramatis personæ were seized with a sudden frenzy; but their risibility had a different source. A fat Whitechapel butcher seated on the centre of the front bench of the pit, was accompanied by his mastiff, who being accustomed to sit on the same seat with his master at home, naturally supposed that he might here enjoy the like privilege: the butcher sat very far back, and the dog finding a fair opening, got on the seat, and fixing his fore paws on the rail of the orchestra, peered at the performers with as upright a head and as grave an air as the most sagacious critic of the day. Our corpulent slaughterman was made of melting stuff, and not being accustomed to the heat of a play-house, found himself op pressed by a large and well powdered Sunday periwig, which, for the gratifica- [ous" condition one morning in the Sution of cooling and wiping his head, he preme Court of Iowa when one of his pulled off and placed on the head of the cases was called. He appeared for the mastiff. The dog being in so conspicuous a situation, caught the eye of Mr. Garrick and the other performers. A mastiff in a churchwarden's wig was too much-it would have provoked laughter in Lear himself, at the moment of his deepest distress no wonder then that it had such an effect on his representative. BAD FOR THE COW. When George Stephenson, the celebrated Scotch engineer, had completed his model of a locomotive, he presented himself before a committee of the British parliament, and asked the attention and support of that body. The grave M. Ps., looking sneeringly at the great mechanic's invention, asked, "So you have made a carriage to run only by steam, have you?" "Yes, my lords." "And you expect your carriage to run on parallel rails, so that it can't go off, do you?" "Yes, my lords." "Well now, Mr. Stephenson, let us show you how absurd your claim is. Suppose when your carriage is running upon these rails at the rate of twenty or thirty miles per hour, if you're extravagant enough to even suppose such a thing is possible, a cow should get in its way. You can't turn out for her-what then?" "Then 'twill be bad for the coo, my lords!" MOLIÈRE'S PHYSICIAN. Though an habitual valetudinarian, Molière relied almost upon the temperance of his diet for the re-establishment of his health. "What use do you make of our physician?" said the king to him one day. We chat together, sire," said the poet. "He gives me his prescriptions: I never follow them, and so I get well." 66 plaintiff. He rose as soon as his name was called, and, advancing to the counsel table, laid hold of it with a firm grasp. Steadying himself with difficulty and assuming an air of dignity, he said slowly and thickly: "Your Honors, I don't care how you decide this case. I don't care whether you decide it for me or against me." The Court was astonished. After a reflective pause the distinguished lawyer went on: "On second thought, I'll give you five dollars to decide it against me." The Court was shocked. "Mr. Star," said the Chief Justice, solemnly, "this Court cannot permit such contemptuous language, even from so eminent a counsellor as yourself." "Your Honor," interrupted Star, swaying to and fro, "No contempt meant. No contempt meant. I didn't mean five dollars for the whole Court, but five dollars a piece." He was considered too helpless to be fined. MY FIRST PUNCH. I shall never forget my first punch. I had at the age of seventeen occasionally, "drank of the wine of the vine benign," but punch had been a forbidden draught, an unattainable desire. In Francesco Redi's beautiful dithyrambic, "Bacco in Toscana," or rather the translation in Leigh Hunt's own jaunty manner, are a few lines describing most accurately my sensations under my first punch: When I feel it gurgling, murmuring Down my throat and my esophagus, Something, and I know not what, Strangely tickleth my sarcophagus. Something easy of perception, But by no means of description. I was sent, when scarcely seventeen, on a visit to my maternal uncle, who was quietly nibbling "the remainder biscuit" of his life in indolence and ease, not many miles from the rectilinear city. He had formerly been captain of a privateer, and but a few years have elapsed since ONE of the leaders of the Iowa Bar, his flag-staff stood perpendicularly proud named Star, was a man of pronounced on the margin of the Schuylkill, in the convivial habits, and sometimes appeared centre of a little mound, which knobbed in Court in a condition of great exhilara- the end of the green slope or strip of tion. He was in a “halcyon and vocifer-lawn leading from the river to the dwell NO CONTEMPT MEANT. VOL. IV-W. H. 24 ing-house. On the anniversaries of the declaration, the enemy's evacuation, capitulation, and subjugation, the old hero gave the bunting to the breeze; and the floating of the federated stars in the morning air gave the neighborhood a goodly token of a holiday. "It is not good for a man to be alone," saith the Psalmist, and my relative, with a marvellous propensity to match-making, endeavored to impress the truth of the above axiom upon the minds of all his neighbors and friends who had not disposed of their "unhoused, free condition." He was not backward in espousing the principles he professed; he was the jolly widower of a third wife, and openly avowed his intention of completing the connubial quartette. His inquisitorial optics had discovered a fitting object in the person of a young widow who resided vis-à-vis to my uncle, but preferred a tête-à-tête with a dashing major, who was many years my uncle's junior. So desirous was he that everybody within his vortex should be mated that he compelled an ancient Hungarian, who officiated as gardener, to marry his Scotch housekeeper; they disagreed, of course, and the locality was daily rife with rows in broken English, and Celtic and Sclavonian guttural grumblings. My uncle was an unwelcome visitor, generally, at the houses of his acquaintances. The old people feared his hymeneal propensities, and the young disliked his system of interference in all love matters. A shot in the knee proved the prowess of an offended father, who had challenged my match-making nunkey for harboring his daughter, who, at my relative's instigation, wedded herself to poverty and wretchedness, in the shape of a peripatetic lecturer on astronomy, whose stock in trade consisted of a broken orrery, two handsome legs, half a microscope, a smooth discourse, a magic lantern, and an unquenchable thirst. The bullet gave my uncle a halt in his walk, but did not impede his progress in connubialization. Even the animals about his grounds were paired, and a stupid old goose, who pined after her gander that had been worried by a mastiff, and refused to mate again, was hung out of hand, as a sacrifice to Hymen and my uncle's whim. "Well, Frank," said my uncle, on my arrival, "I guess you found the wind rather cool on your weather quarter this raw day. The little bay pony holds her own well-a good little craft, well timbered, and sails free. Belay there with the rattlin of that curtain; trice it up a trifle higher, that as I sit here I may see if Major Dobkins fires his usual evening salute at widow Brown's door. I rather think there's something in the wind there, for he cut his stick at seven bells, instead of stopping well on to the middle watch. If there should be a screw loose, and he be turned out of the service, I'll tip the widow a broadside myself this very night. Now come to an anchor alongside hereno, no; slew more to the starboard, for I want to put my game leg on that stool. That will do. Now, then, how old are you?" "Seventeen, next month," said I, timidly. "Why, what a lazy loblolly boy you must be, not to think of getting spliced before this." "Getting what, uncle?" "Spliced. Splicing, sir, is joining the fag ends of two useless ropes into one, and making useful what otherwise would have been expended as old oakum. good splice is the pride of an old sailor's heart." A "What useless piece of old rope do you wish to splice me to, sir?" "No grinning or sneering here, you young powder-monkey! Have you tumbled into love yet?" "In love!-oh no, sir," said I with a bashful chuckle. "Then fall in, directly, d'ye hear? You know Epsy Parbar? "What, that tall, ugly gawky?" Who said she was pretty? Ugly women make the best wives. My first rib looked like an old Creek squaw with the small-pox, yet she was the best of the lot." "But Miss Epsy is antique enough to be my mother," said I, most valiantly. "Better able to look after such a child as you, and convoy you safe across the troubled sea of life. My little woman, who has just gone to Davy's locker, was not older than you are now when we got spliced, and I guess that Miss Epsy has not been rated on the ship's books of life so long as I have." But, my dear uncle—” "No palaver, or I'll mast-head you. You are my heir, you know. I've had three wives, but no chicks; I'm not so old a rooster but I can mate again, and then, perhaps, a chickabiddy of my own may knock you off your perch. If you pair off with Epsy, I'll do the handsome thing by you, even if I should couple again the following week. So, leave off twiddling your thumbs, and stretch away for Epsy's house, and fall in love directly. I've telegraphed her of your intention; she expects your arrival; go and report yourself; come back in the evening to me, and I will brew you a stiff northwester, and spin you a yarn over our cigars." Like an obedient child, I sallied forth, and prepared to execute the commands of my dictatorial uncle. Had remonstrances been likely to succeed, I was unable to offer any, so completely did his assumption of authority deter me from daring to dispute even the propriety of his wish. I was the only son of a widowed mother, who was merely existing on the remains of her husband's effects. My uncle had signified his intention of leaving me the bulk of his property, and I knew that the slightest infraction of his orders would totally exclude me from his will and walls. which she shaded her pig's twinklers, and speaking in a girlish treble with much simpering and giggling. Ladies, if I have rudely delineated this unit of your species, impute it to the antierasable depth of my despair-to a devoted veneration, a passionate respect for all your fascinating sex; a respect which this Medusan Venus was endeavoring to subvert in its infancy, by proving that there did exist one woman in this world whom it was possible to hate! I was not in love, as I had truly told my uncle; but, like every enthusiastic lad of seventeen, I had pictured to myself an ideality of beauty, grace, and youth, which I expected some day to find perfected, when I should kneel, and instantly adore. But when I gazed upon the unlovable creature before me, and observed her uncouth, and, for an old lady, indelicate behavior, my heart sunk within me, and I felt like a poor toad that had timidly ventured out to bask in the sunshine of a fine spring morning, and was suddenly crushed by the hoof of some heedless ploughman passing by. After spending an hour in simpering out the usual imbecilities, I bade my anI found my intended bride even more cient fair adieu. It was early evening, disagreeable than I had pictured her in the sky was radiant with life and lovelimy mind. Her small ferrety eyes were ness; the cold north wind whistled deeply set in a little bullet-shaped head, through the leafless boughs, and the which surmounted her long scraggy slight crispness of an incipient frost crackthroat. Her nose was of that shape led beneath my feet. I drew my cloak familiarly termed ace-of-clubs, and seemed tight around me, and strode lustily on; absolutely turning itself up in disgust at but I was chilled to the heart-wretchedthe aperture underneath it, called in ness and disgust were fighting for my courtesy, a mouth-an immense orifice, soul, and not a single star shot a ray of garnished with two or three grave-stone hope through the Cimmerean darkness looking teeth; while down the " sear and that blanketed" my mind. My uncle yellow cheeks several rat-tail, lanky was despotic-I dare not contradict him twists of hair were dangling in melan--and yet submission and despair were choly limberness, but in the nearest ap- one. The thought of a leap into a clear proach to a curl that Epsy could persuade them to assume. Peu de gens savent être vieux. Miss Parbar had been so long making up her mind to own to thirty, that she had passed forty at a hand gallop, and was still careering most joyously on her way. Dressed in a studied deshabille, and shaking back the elfish love-locks which adorned The time-worn temples of that ancient land, my lengthy love received me with an affectation of maiden timidity, peeping at me through the fingers of the hand with 66 stream that gently gurgled past me flashed upon my mind, but I was too young, too full of life; hope, indeed, seemed hopeless, but one soft, melting thought of home, and an involuntary upspringing of that elasticity of mind which belongs alone to youth, turned my ideas, and I entered my uncle's house resolved to suffer all, I found him sitting over a blazing wood Franklin, and the table spread with fire, the kettle singing merrily on the cigars, and the delicious paraphernalia of punch. Well, Frank, just in time; I've stowed |